Although the sprawling corruption of the Trump administration might have made the issue difficult to catch — or at times recall, Kellyanne Conway, who although she’s faded from view was prominent for awhile, was found to have repeatedly violated federal prohibitions outlined in what is known as the Hatch Act on federal personnel using their positions for political ends.
When in power, Conway even at one point pushed listeners — while speaking in a formal interview — to purchase products originating with Ivanka Trump’s lines of items! Conway never faced much in terms of actual consequences over this behavior, though — but an amendment Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) presented in recent days would implement the possibility of up to two years of prison time for willful violations of the Hatch Act, adding onto the financial penalties and potential professional consequences that relevant portions of the federal rules already established.
For Conway, considering her repeated violations of the rules in the Hatch Act and that a federal agency called the Office of Special Counsel recommended she be fired, it might not have been that difficult to prove she’d committed her misdeeds willfully, although there’s no opportunity under established principles of U.S. law to bring a case against the ex-official on the basis of provisions that weren’t law at the time.
Goldman’s proposal, which he presented as a suggested amendment to other legislation, would make violations of the Hatch Act of the sort that Conway and others committed a felony offense. Making his point clear, he named the measure after Conway. The “Kellyanne Conway Amendment,” he called it. The legislation he was hoping to amend grew from Republican outrage over federal officials getting in touch with social media teams over content on their sites, although Trump’s camp did the very same thing. Overall, absent some kind of judicial measure obtained through well-established channels, it’s unclear that any of these figures would have — or did have — some kind of inherent authority to force action amounting to real-world censorship from the government through social media companies like Twitter. But what has been done — and matters — could be threatened.
“H.R. 140 is a solution in search of a problem, as Republicans on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability have provided no evidence in any way, shape, or form, that any protected speech was prohibited by the government,” a press release from Goldman said. “In fact, H.R. 140 would in effect bar federal employees from alerting social media platforms to nefarious foreign influence strategies, inviting autocratic regimes and actors to increase their attacks on American democracy.” The underlying legislation covers alerts to social media firms of something on their sites rather than simply somehow forcing it off.
