It isn’t as if ethics means anything in the White House these days, but the press secretary just once again violated an ethics standard that she’s been warned about previously, and violated a particular Twitter rule at the same time.
In a moment of pure targeted harassment, which violates Twitter’s rules of conduct, Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted the business phone number of The New York Times over an anonymous op-ed they printed from a senior official in the Trump administration calling the president “amoral,” “ineffective,” and “anti-democratic.”
The ethics violation stems from Sanders’ use of her government Twitter account to attack a private business. She did so once before when she posted about The Red Hen restaurant asking her to leave because they chose not to serve a woman who publicly backed the president’s decision to separate immigrant families at the border and detain their children.
At that time, just as now, she was in violation of specific rules set forward by the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics.
‘According to rules set in place by the nonpartisan OGE, Sanders may have violated rule 5 CFR 2635.702 (c), which bars federal employees from using their government position to endorse any private “product, service, or enterprise.” Conversely, this same rule bans federal employees from using their official titles to denouncesuch private entities.’
Meanwhile, the president has ranted about forcing The New York Times to reveal their source due to “national security” concerns.
Just as The Washington Post kept Deep Throat’s identity secret for 30 years, The New York Times will never release the identity of the op-ed’s author, and the White House is wading into deep waters with these demands.
At the very least, they should be held to the same standards of ethics and Twitter rules as everyone else.
Twitter users were outraged by the harassment. Read some of their comments below:
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
