Seven More Complaints Filed for Trump Administration Hatch Act Violation
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Public Citizen filed seven new complaints against the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Department of Justice (DOJ), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the White House for explicitly partisan messaging on their homepages blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. The complaints allege this is a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of taxpayer money for partisan political purposes.
Public Citizen filed previously filed Hatch Act violation complaints against the Department for Housing and Human Services and the Small Business Administration on similar grounds.
Craig Holman, a government ethics expert with Public Citizen who filed the complaints, commented on the violations:
“The Trump administration is violating the Hatch Act with reckless abandon — using taxpayer dollars to plaster partisan screeds on every government homepage that they can get their hands on.
“Even for an administration that flouts ethics guidelines regularly, these messages are a particularly egregious and clear-cut sign that Trump and his cabinet see themselves as above the law.
“They must not be allowed to continue this behavior unchecked.”