Lynne Patton, an administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), said that she may have broken federal law, and she doesn’t care who knows about it.
According to the Huff Post , Patton wrote a message on social media last week saying that she may have violated the Hatch Act, but that she doesn’t care either way.
“Just retweeted this amazing tweet from both of my Twitter accounts – professional and personal,” she wrote referencing a tweet attacking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and championing her boss Ben Carson. “It may be a Hatch Act violation. It may not be. Either way, I honestly don’t care anymore. These people are determined to try to ruin and discredit a good man.”
“In the end, they will only serve to destroy themselves and this great country when successful men and women from the private sector refuse to become public servants and a target of their undeserving partisan hate and obstruction,” she concluded.
Unsurprisingly, people had something to say about her attitude, pointing out that she is paid $161,900 a year to oversee a department with a budget of billions of dollars. She said that her critics were “lazy internet parrots” and “liberal snowflakes.”
It’s not the first time that Patton potentially violated the Hatch Act. Earlier this year, she displayed Trump campaign material in her office. She isn’t the only Trump-appointed official to have allegedly violated the act, either. Last November, six White House officials were reprimanded for using their social media accounts to send a partisan political message.
The 1939 Hatch Act was put in place to prevent public officials from using their office to engage in partisan political activity.
Ben Carson has been under fire this week after a disastrous three-hour meeting at a congressional hearing on Tuesday during which he was asked about real estate owned housing.
Freshman Congresswoman Katie Porter asked Carson if he was familiar with the term “REO.”
“An Oreo?” he replied.
Porter, unamused, spelled the term back to him twice in order to elicit an answer.
Carson eventually took a stab at the term, guessing a “real estate e-organization.”
After the tense meeting, Carson tweeted a picture of himself with a package of Oreo cookies, promising to send some to her office.
OH, REO! Thanks, @RepKatiePorter . Enjoying a few post-hearing snacks. Sending some your way! pic.twitter.com/q4MMTBWVUI
— Archive: Ben Carson (@SecretaryCarson) May 21, 2019
Porter confirmed that she got the cookies, according to The Washington Post . She said that she was happy to receive the message, but what she was hoping for were answers to the questions that she had posed during the meeting.
