**DISCLAIMER: This article was first published in February of 2023**
New York’s Congressman Dan Goldman put forth a piece of legislation quite literally dubbed the “Kellyanne Conway Amendment” that would effectively make any willful violation of the Hatch Act a felony offense, carrying up to two years behind bars as punishment.
The Hatch Act is a federal regulation that prohibits any federal employees or personnel from utilizing their position for political gains: “Its main provision prohibits civil service employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the president and vice president, from engaging in some forms of political activity.”
Congressman Dan Goldman said of the proposed amendment:
Today, we are marking up HR 140, a Republican bill that purports to stop the federal government from censoring protected speech under the First Amendment, despite the fact that such conduct is of course already prohibited by law. Worse yet, this is a solution in search of a problem, as my Republican colleagues have identified no evidence to support their conspiracy theory that protected speech was censored by the government. So instead of chasing ghosts, I am offering the Kellyanne Conway Amendment to address a truly serious issue: that the Trump administration wantonly and repeatedly violated the Hatch Act prohibition against using the official power of the government for partisan political purposes. This Amendment would make willful violations of the Hatch Act a felony offense and ensure serial offenders like Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway are faced with potential jail time as a deterrent.”
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Donald Trump’s administration was rife with violators of the Hatch Act, with a federal investigation determining that “at least 13 former Trump administration officials violated the law by intermingling campaigning with their official government duties,” per PBS News.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
