Awaking in Argentina to headlines like “Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe” and “Mueller Probing Ivanka Trump, Don Jr. Roles in Trump Tower Moscow Plans,” the president of the United States, otherwise known as “Individual 1,” was at first surprised, then furious, then sarcastic. “Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly),” he wrote on Twitter. “Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail . . .” (And so forth.)
Trump has been more vocal than usual of late, given the crushing pace of developments in the Russia probe this past week. Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and Randy Credico are all publicly feuding with Robert Mueller—and with each other—over who may have provided advanced knowledge of Russia’s hacking of the Clinton campaign. F.B.I. and congressional investigators have launched a new inquiry into George Papadopoulos. The Manafort-Mueller cooperation agreement collapsed. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Trump Organization efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. As West Wing insiders told my colleague Gabriel Sherman, Trump associates fear the special counsel has laid a perjury trap for the president.
But while Trump can’t stop talking about his impending political crisis, Washington is warning federal employees to keep quiet. On Wednesday, the Office of Special Counsel, issued new guidance barring some 2 million federal employees from discussing the topic of impeachment or using the word “resistance,” asserting that such behavior would be a violation of the Hatch Act, the law that prevents government employees from taking part in certain political activities. (The O.S.C., which enforces the Hatch Act, is an independent federal agency unrelated to the special counsel office investigating Trump’s Russia ties.)
Watch Now:
The Women of 2018 Speak Out
“We understand that the ‘resistance’ and ‘#resist’ originally gained prominence shortly after President Trump’s election in 2016 and generally related to efforts to oppose administration policies,” the memo states. “However, ‘resistance,’ ‘#resist’ and similar terms have become inextricably linked with the electoral success (or failure) of the president.” Conversations about impeachment is also verboten, the O.S.C. explains: “Advocating for a candidate to be impeached, and thus potentially disqualified from holding federal office, is clearly directed at the failure of that candidate’s campaign for federal office. Similarly, advocating against a candidate’s impeachment is activity directed at maintaining that candidate’s eligibility for federal office and therefore also considered political activity.”
Civil-rights lawyers and O.S.C. alumni have criticized the directive as overreaching and, potentially, illegal. “This goes beyond past guidance about what partisan political activity is, and is more restrictive of speech of federal employees than past guidance that I’ve been able to find,” Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told The New York Times. Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said the guidance could be a fair interpretation of the law. The problem, explained Obama administration lawyer Daniel Jacobson, is that the guidance did not draw a clear line around political speech and could potentially intimidate employees, even those who were Trump supporters, from exercising their First Amendment rights. “People who use the term ‘resist’ could be expressing views about any number of matters, and the presumption that they are specifically advocating for the defeat of a candidate in 2020 strikes me as crazy and raises significant First Amendment concerns,” he said.
In an interview with the Times, Ana Galindo-Marrone, the chief of the Office of Special Counsel’s Hatch Act unit since the Clinton administration, said that while displaying a sign that said “Impeach Trump” would be a clear violation of the Hatch Act, merely discussing the proceedings at work fell into a new “gray area” that had not existed prior to the Trump administration. Nixon and Clinton also faced impeachment, after all, but both were in their second terms by the time the question was raised, and so both were ineligible to run for re-election. The Trump situation, on the other hand, had raised questions Galindo-Marrone said she felt compelled to answer. She and her deputy were “receiving numerous questions about the rules,” the Times reports. Her answer will surely please a president who can’t stop blabbing, himself.
More Great Stories from Vanity Fair
— Wall Street’s case for President Bloomberg
— The inside scoop on Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough’s secret wedding ceremony
— Why the Democrats still need Nancy Pelosi
— The strategy behind Mark Zuckerberg’s omnipotence
— Why the administration just can’t quit Mohammed bin Salman
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.
