The Scoop
Lynne Patton, the highest-ranking Black official in Donald Trump’s White House, is returning to work this week after fully serving out a suspension from federal employment related to a past Hatch Act violation.
After she was appointed as deputy assistant to the president and director of minority outreach in late January, Patton stepped aside for two months to comply with a 2021 sanction by the US Office of Special Counsel, Semafor has learned. She’s expected to return this week in the same dual roles.
The special counsel’s office settled with Patton after alleging that she improperly used her Department of Housing and Urban Development position during Trump’s first term for political purposes. Patton acknowledged violations of the Hatch Act, which is meant to bar federal employees from partisan political activity on the job.
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Know More
During the president’s first term, OSC singled out more than a dozen members of his administration as violating the Hatch Act.
Kellyanne Conway was reprimanded twice for using her position to promote Ivanka Trump’s clothing line. Stephanie Grisham, Nikki Haley, and Dan Scavino were reprimanded for using their government social media accounts for political activity.
The OSC also found that then-Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue unlawfully promoted Trump’s reelection in 2020 while delivering an official speech in North Carolina and ordered him to repay costs associated with the trip. None of those offenses rose to the level of Patton’s violation, according to the watchdog group that filed multiple complaints against her between 2018 and 2019.
“I think Ms. Patton served the harsh penalty for violations, in part because what OSC found with respect to her violations is that she misled citizens about what they were being asked to be a part of,” Donald Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Semafor.
The Office of Special Counsel found that Patton, while serving as a HUD regional administrator, filmed New York City Housing Authority residents and later used the footage in a video shown at the Republican National Convention. She was fined $1,000 and barred from federal service for 48 months as part of the settlement.
Tim Murtagh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, defended the handling of the video at the time. “All interview subjects were fully aware of the purpose of the interviews,” he told The New York Times in August. “Lynne Patton was acting in her own personal capacity.”
Not everyone thought the penalty matched the crime. The Project on Government Oversight criticized the special counsel’s office for “singling” out Patton — the only Black woman among the 17 Trump administration officials it found to have violated the Hatch Act during Trump’s first term.
Notable
- Trump’s administration recently proposed weakening the Hatch Act in order to make it easier for federal officials to support the sitting president, The New York Times reported.
- During the Biden administration, the Office of Special Counsel sanctioned a federal prosecutor for what it described as “one of the most egregious Hatch Act violations that OSC has investigated.”