Government

Federal Employees Warned That Resistence Is Futile

Employees also warned that impeachment talk could violate the Hatch Act

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(Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

The Hatch Act is a very nice small-d-democracy law that prohibits political activity from most government employees while working on the taxpayer’s dime. It’s cool. There’s a whole West Wing episode where President Bartlett dutifully goes to the residence to solicit campaign donations instead of making the calls in the Oval Office.

But because we live in the Trump era, we are not allowed to have nice things. The corrosive influence of Trump demands that any norm he can break, he will. Any law he can weaponize against his enemies, he will. If you gave Trump a unicorn, he’d use it to impale Mexican children enticed over the border by its rainbows.

This week, the Office of Special Counsel (not the Mueller people, the guys who say the President can torture people) issued “guidance” about the Hatch Act. They told federal employees that any talk of “impeachment” could violate the Act, as well as talk of “resistance.”

That’s right. Legal counsel to the President unironically conceded that trying to prevent the President of the United States from committing high crimes and misdemeanors, or merely discussing those crimes, was tantamount to working for the Democratic Party and should be prohibited. In TrumpWorld there is no country, only Trump, so anybody working with the interests of the country in mind must be working against Trump and should be subject to prohibitions against political activity.

Of course, this is legal work coming out of the Trump administration, and legal work coming out of the Trump administration is notoriously shoddy. The Office of Special Counsel’s first guidance was so overbroad and vague that they had to almost immediately walk it back.

The second version, which allows you to talk about impeachment with your federal co-workers because we live in a world where that is just a NORMAL CONVERSATION THESE DAYS, also has some deep vagueness and enforceability issues. It says you can talk about “resistance” to a particular issue, but not Trump.

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That just goes to show how myopic Trump is about his own “brand” and has no concern about the country at large. #ResistWall, okay. #ResistTrump, makes Trumpy mad.

It’s confusing. From the New York Times:

Against that backdrop, not all critics of the guidance initially issued this week were mollified. Among them, Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said in a statement that the rules remained unclear and called on the office to withdraw all the guidance and start over.

“Reasonable employees would undoubtedly find this distinction confusing, and such incoherence could have no effect except to put a chill on workers’ speech,” he said.‘

There’s also the issue of whether this guidance violates federal whistleblower protections. Again, the President of the United States likely commits CRIMES. Reporting those crimes, or merely talking with your co-workers about crimes you believe are being committed, is not a violation of the Hatch Act.

All that said, federal employees who are truly trying to “resist” SHOULD be willing to violate the Hatch Act and anything else Trump throws up in their way. Spare me the Slactivism. Real resistance costs. People have already lost jobs trying to stand up to Trump. More will. Federal employees, especially the ones at DHS and DOJ and EPA, should be engaged in an administrative coup d’etat.

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America is run by an evil government now. That’s not a political statement, it’s a historical one. And history will judge those who worked for the administration, versus those who worked against it.

SABOTAGE is also illegal. Plan your resistance accordingly.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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