Dan Goldman Offers ‘Kellyanne Conway Amendment’ Proposing Prison Sentences For Hatch Act Violations
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) introduced the “Kellyanne Conway amendment” during a House Oversight Committee meeting on Tuesday in the hopes of adding prison sentences to Hatch Act violations.
“You know what Ms. Conway’s response to her serial violations of the Hatch Act were? She said, quote, ‘If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work. Let me know when the jail sentence starts,’” Goldman said at the meeting. Conway, who is now a Fox News contributor, served as a special counselor to the president from 2017 to 2020 in the Trump administration.
“Mr. Sessions said earlier today that the purpose of H.R. 140 is to try to stop anyone from using the White House for political purposes. And so in that vein, today, I’m offering the Kellyanne Conway amendment that will allow for prison sentences under criminal violations of the law for knowing and intentional violations of the Hatch Act,” Goldman continued.
H.R. 140, also known as the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act was marked up during the meeting on Tuesday. Goldman also took a swipe at the bill.
“This amendment will add a criminal provision to the Hatch Act to prevent the kind of blatant disregard for the law demonstrated by Ms. Conway and her colleagues in the Trump administration. Unlike the bill that we are marking up today, which is a solution without a problem, the Hatch Act violations are a problem that needs a solution,” he concluded.
In June of 2019, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) today sent a report then-President Donald Trump detailing Conway’s violations of the Hatch Act.
The report found Conway violated the law “on numerous occasions by disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.”
The OSC’s findings noted:
Although the President and Vice President are exempt from the Hatch Act, employees of the White House are not. OSC’s letter to the President accompanying the report refers to Ms. Conway as a “repeat offender” and states: “Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions thus erode the principal foundation of our democratic system—the rule of law.”
Today’s report follows a March 2018 OSC report finding that Ms. Conway violated the Hatch Act during two separate television interviews in which she advocated for and against candidates in the 2017 Alabama special election for U.S. Senate.
The Hatch Act prohibits civil service federal employees in the executive branch from engaging in certain types of political activities while on the job.
Watch the full clip via C-SPAN
