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White House press secretary Jen Psaki may have violated a law
barring executive branch employees from partisan politicking, a
government ethics watchdog said Friday.

But the group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington, also said that Psaki’s alleged breach of the Hatch
Act was nowhere near as egregious as the mountain of similar
ethics complaints that piled up during former President Donald
Trump’s administration.

CREW alleged in a complaint that Psaki violated the ethics law
Thursday during a press briefing when she affirmed President Joe
Biden’s support for Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate
Terry McAuliffe.

“I have to be a little careful about how much political analysis
I do from here,” Psaki said before noting that Biden “of course”
wants McAuliffe “to be the future governor of Virginia.”

“We’re going to do everything we can to help” McAuliffe, Psaki
said, “and we believe in the agenda he’s representing.”

The complaint, filed to Henry Kerner of the Office of Special
Counsel, alleged that Psaki appeared to violate the Hatch Act by
“impermissibly mixing official government business with advocacy
for former Governor McAuliffe’s election.” Her remarks were made
in her official capacity and they were aimed at a preferred
outcome in a partisan political election, the complaint said.

The complaint called on Kerner to investigate and take “any
appropriate disciplinary action” against Psaki.

“While the President has publicly expressed his support for
McAuliffe, we’ll leave it to the press and the campaign to
provide commentary on the race,” Psaki told CNBC in an email.

“I take ethics very seriously and will choose my words more
carefully moving forward,” she said.

CREW President Noah Bookbinder, who authored the complaint,
noted in a press release that Psaki’s conduct “does not come
close to rising to the level of the outrageous offenses of the
Trump administration,” which “systematically co-opted the
government for the president’s reelection.”

The ethics group filed Hatch Act complaints against numerous
Trump administration officials, including two press secretaries,
Kayleigh McEnany and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as well as then-
communications aides Raj Shah and Hogan Gidley.

CREW said its complaints led to reprimands against at least a
dozen Trump administration officials, including former Trump
advisors Kellyanne Conway and Peter Navarro, former United
Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and Trump’s third press
secretary, Stephanie Grisham.

The Office of Special Counsel in 2019 issued a scathing report
recommending Conway in particular should be fired for her
repeated Hatch Act violations. But Trump shrugged off the
report, claiming in a Fox News interview that “it looks to me
like they’re trying to take away her right of free speech.”

The Trump administration’s abuse of the Hatch Act “does not mean
we should be casual about compliance with an important ethics
law” under Biden, Bookbinder said. “The Biden administration
should not follow the Trump administration down that path.”

“After the ethics disaster of the Trump administration, there is
extra pressure on the Biden administration to be above board,”
Bookbinder said. “We hope the Biden administration will give
renewed attention to staying on the right side of this law.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/15/biden-press-secretary-jen-psaki- may-have-violated-hatch-act-watchdog-says.html

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