Trump Refuses To Bend to the Office of Special Counsel on Conway Allegations: 'Just Not Fair'
President Donald Trump said Friday that he will not fire White House counselor Kellyanne Conway despite a federal watchdog’s recommendation that she should be dismissed for violating the Hatch Act.
On Thursday, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel called Conway a “repeat offender” who has disregarded the law banning federal or federally funded employees from engaging in political activity while performing their official duties. The OSC attacked Conway last year for comments she made during a 2017 special election for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama.
“No, I’m not going to fire her. I think she’s a terrific person,” Trump said Friday during “Fox & Friends.”
Trump fully defended Conway, who was one of the managers of his successful 2016 presidential campaign and who transitioned to her current job after the election, rejecting any call that he would advise her to tone down her oft-expressed scorn for various Democratic presidential candidates.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Trump said. “A person wouldn’t be able to express themselves, and I just don’t see it.”
Trump said Conway has rights. “I got briefed on it yesterday, and it looks to me like they’re trying to take away their right of free speech. And that’s just not fair. She’s got to have the right of responding to questions,” he said.
Trump said the recommended punishment “seems to me to be very unfair, it’s called freedom of speech.”
According to the report on Conway, the punishment was necessary to enforce order.
“The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) calls on President Donald J. Trump to remove Ms. Conway from her federal position immediately,” the report read, criticizing Conway for speaking about Democratic presidential candidates.
“Beginning in February 2019, Ms. Conway, during official media appearances, engaged in a pattern of partisan attacks on several Democratic Party candidates shortly after they announced their candidacy for President, including Senator Cory Booker, Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Congressman Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, and former Vice President Joe Biden. For example, in one interview, Ms. Conway insinuated that Senator Booker was ‘sexist’ and a ‘tinny’ ‘motivational speaker.’ In another, Ms. Conway said Senator Warren was ‘lying’ about her ethnicity and ‘appropriating somebody else’s heritage.'”
“In addition to disparaging individual Democratic candidates, Ms. Conway directed insults at the entire Democratic field. For example, she compared the Democratic Party candidates to ‘woodchips’ and reminded the American public ‘anything times zero equals zero’ when it came to the number of Democratic candidates and their ideas. Each of these actions constitutes a violation of the Hatch Act’s prohibition on the use of official authority to interfere with or affect an election,” the report stated.
“Ms. Conway’s advocacy against the Democratic candidates and open endorsement of the President’s reelection effort during both official media appearances and on her Twitter account constitute prohibited political activity under the Hatch Act. Accordingly, she repeatedly continues to violate the law,” it read.
“In light of her knowledge of the Hatch Act’s prohibitions and the fact that just last year OSC sent a disciplinary action referral to the President for similar violations, Ms. Conway’s decision to continue using her media outreach to attack Democratic Party candidates is unacceptable,” according to the report.
“Ms. Conway’s persistent, notorious, and deliberate Hatch Act violations have created an unprecedented challenge to this office’s ability to enforce the Act, as we are statutorily charged,” the report read. It quoted Conway as having told the OSC, “‘Let me know when the jail sentence starts.'”
Special counsel Henry Kerner told Fox News that whether Conway was fired was Trump’s call, not his.
“We respect his decision and, of course, the president has any option he’d like — to reprimand or not to reprimand,” Kerner said. “It is up to the president’s discretion and we respect that.”
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