By Phil Riske | Senior Reporter/Writer
Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s longtime spokeswoman, violated the Hatch Act with a tweet containing the acronym for President Trump’s campaign slogan, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) says the tweet was found to be in violation of the Hatch Act, and the Administration was ripped for “repeated” violations of the law, The Hillreported.
As a White House staffer, Grisham, who was a spokeswoman at the Arizona House of Representatives, is not to use her government position, including the Twitter account to promote political candidates.
Grisham, a staffer on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was supposed to resume her full-time job as a spokeswoman at the Arizona House of Representatives less than a week after he won the election but there’s no evidence she did.
She still received her legislative staff pay, $19,000 over eight weeks, Arizona Capitol Timesreported at the time, although she rarely set foot in the state because she was on the road with Trump’s multi-state “thank you tour” and doing other work for the president-elect.
Grisham initially took a long-term, unpaid leave from the House to work on Trump’s campaign, but lame-duck House Speaker David Gowan put her back on the public payroll for his remaining eight weeks in office, House payroll, records showed
The OSC said it issued a warning to Grisham, according to the letter sent to Carper, who toldThe Hill Grisham’s violation “astounding.”
A number of Trump administration officials, including White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, have been cited by the OSC in the past for violations of the law, but no punishments have been levied by the White House.
