Special Counsel: WH Chief of Staff Ron Klain Broke the Law
By Nick Arama | 11:48 AM on October 27, 2022
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain is sometimes assumed to be the power behind Joe Biden at the White House.
However, Klain seems to think that being a troll on Twitter is how to influence people because he lives on the site, pushing all kinds of lies and propaganda tweets. It’s funny that they attacked President Donald Trump for being on Twitter when Klain is constantly on it. So much for the knock on “mean tweets.”
But Klain’s Twitter habit just got him in trouble. According to the Office of the Special Counsel, Klain violated the Hatch Act with one of his tweets. The Hatch Act restricts federal employees from being involved in campaign-related activities during the conduct of their jobs. Ana Galindo-Marrone, chief of the Hatch Act Unit at the OSC, said that Klain had violated the Act in response to the America First Legal group which had filed a complaint against Klain.
Galindo-Marrone wrote that Klain “retweeted a May 22, 2022 message from Strike PAC (@StrikePAC) from his official Twitter account (@WHCOS). The tweet read, ‘Operation Fly Formula delivers 70,000 pounds of infant formula for American mothers and their infants. Thank you @POTUS.’ The tweet also read, ‘Get your Democrats Deliver merch today!’ and included a link to Strike PAC’s online store and an image of the group’s ‘Democrats Deliver’ tshirt.”
Strike PAC “is a partisan political group, and according to its website, it ‘supports campaign finance reform and will help elect Democrats who support these vital policies.’ It also has a ‘nationalized strategy’ aimed at promoting the Democratic Party by ‘tell[ing] stories of how Democrats deliver on their promises to improve the lives of voters,’” the OSC letter notes.
Klain violated two provisions of the Hatch Act, Galindo-Marrone said.
By retweeting this message, Mr. Klain used his official Twitter account to promote a partisan political group’s interests and, therefore, OSC has concluded that he violated the Hatch Act’s use of official authority prohibition,” the letter says.
“In addition, Strike PAC’s tweet constituted a solicitation for political contributions because it encouraged others to buy the group’s merchandise. A political contribution is defined as any gift, subscription, loan, advance, or deposit of money or anything of value, made for any political purpose (i.e., to promote or oppose a partisan political group),” Galindo-Marrone continued.
“The sale of Strike PAC’s merchandise supports the group’s objective of electing Democrats, and so the purchase price is a political contribution for purposes of the Hatch Act. Thus, Strike PAC’s tweet solicited political contributions, and because Mr. Klain retweeted this message, he also violated the Hatch Act’s solicitation prohibition.”
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https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/10/27/special-counsel-wh-chief-of-staff-ron-klain-broke-the-law-n649739
