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Are They High? The Hatch Act Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With Cocaine Found In White House
Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Joseph Curl.
So, the U.S. Secret Service over the weekend found a little baggie of cocaine in the White House (insert your own Hunter Biden jokes here).
Since then, the whole saga has become surreal. First, officials said the coke was found in the library, then in a public section of the West Wing lobby, and the latest version has it being found in the White House's West Executive entrance near the Situation Room.
Before we get to the Hatch Act - which President Joe Biden's deputy press secretary says bars him from discussing the coke scandal - let me just note here that this is a very private entrance and not at all near where random tourists would ever find themselves.
That entrance lies within the secure campus of the White House between the West Wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Senior staff parks in the lot there, and Vice President Kamala Harris' motorcade stages there as well. Most of the people who enter there have "hard passes," which means they have undergone a Secret Service background check to be credentialed.
Sure, hard-pass holders might usher in a small group of visitors to view parts of the West Wing, but the names of every one of those people would be added to a visitor log. And lastly, you better believe there are cameras all over that entrance, not to mention uniformed Secret Service officers galore.
But back to the Hatch Act. Here's what the federal Office of Special Counsel says: "The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs. The law's purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation."
The rules, at the time dubbed "An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities," restrict federal employees concerning political activities.
So it's bizarre that White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates on Thursday said that the Hatch Act forbade him from answering any questions about the cocaine scandal.
In a press briefing aboard Air Force One, as Biden traveled to South Carolina, a reporter asked Bates if "the cocaine found in the White House had belonged to either the president or his son. Are you willing to say that that's not the case?"
"I don't have a response to that because we have to be careful about the Hatch Act," Bates said.
Legal experts immediately dismissed the lame excuse. Attorney Bradley P. Moss told Fox News Digital he is "candidly at a loss as to why Mr. Bates believes the Hatch Act is relevant with respect to addressing that question."
"I could envision other legitimate bases for declining to respond, such as respecting the integrity of the ongoing investigation, but references to the Hatch Act seem misplaced," Moss said.
Richard Painter, who served as ethics chief in George W. Bush's administration but in 2022 ran for Congress as a Democrat, said the Act "does not cover snorting cocaine."
"What the - does the Hatch Act have to do with cocaine?" Painter said in an email to Fox News. "This is the most ridiculous invocation of the Hatch Act I've ever heard," he said, adding that the excuse doesn't work even if someone on Biden's staff was "high as a kite."
And really, maybe that's what's going on - they're all high.
The views expressed in this piece are the author's own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Go Back
So, the U.S. Secret Service over the weekend found a little baggie of cocaine in the White House (insert your own Hunter Biden jokes here).
Since then, the whole saga has become surreal. First, officials said the coke was found in the library, then in a public section of the West Wing lobby, and the latest version has it being found in the White House's West Executive entrance near the Situation Room.
Before we get to the Hatch Act - which President Joe Biden's deputy press secretary says bars him from discussing the coke scandal - let me just note here that this is a very private entrance and not at all near where random tourists would ever find themselves.
That entrance lies within the secure campus of the White House between the West Wing and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Senior staff parks in the lot there, and Vice President Kamala Harris' motorcade stages there as well. Most of the people who enter there have "hard passes," which means they have undergone a Secret Service background check to be credentialed.
Sure, hard-pass holders might usher in a small group of visitors to view parts of the West Wing, but the names of every one of those people would be added to a visitor log. And lastly, you better believe there are cameras all over that entrance, not to mention uniformed Secret Service officers galore.
But back to the Hatch Act. Here's what the federal Office of Special Counsel says: "The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs. The law's purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation."
The rules, at the time dubbed "An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities," restrict federal employees concerning political activities.
So it's bizarre that White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates on Thursday said that the Hatch Act forbade him from answering any questions about the cocaine scandal.
In a press briefing aboard Air Force One, as Biden traveled to South Carolina, a reporter asked Bates if "the cocaine found in the White House had belonged to either the president or his son. Are you willing to say that that's not the case?"
"I don't have a response to that because we have to be careful about the Hatch Act," Bates said.
Legal experts immediately dismissed the lame excuse. Attorney Bradley P. Moss told Fox News Digital he is "candidly at a loss as to why Mr. Bates believes the Hatch Act is relevant with respect to addressing that question."
"I could envision other legitimate bases for declining to respond, such as respecting the integrity of the ongoing investigation, but references to the Hatch Act seem misplaced," Moss said.
Richard Painter, who served as ethics chief in George W. Bush's administration but in 2022 ran for Congress as a Democrat, said the Act "does not cover snorting cocaine."
"What the - does the Hatch Act have to do with cocaine?" Painter said in an email to Fox News. "This is the most ridiculous invocation of the Hatch Act I've ever heard," he said, adding that the excuse doesn't work even if someone on Biden's staff was "high as a kite."
And really, maybe that's what's going on - they're all high.
The views expressed in this piece are the author's own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Comment
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Stan Deatherage said:
( July 23rd, 2023 @ 7:50 am )
This is what happens when some of the occupants within the White House Press Corp decide it might now be the time to try to act as real "journalists," but neither possess the projected integrity, nor the intellectual standing to do so, and are therefore treated like fools by the corrupt Biden Administration, which the majority of these fallow "journalists" may well deserve.
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