A civil rights advocacy group filed a legal complaint against Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) on Monday, accusing him of using his role on President Donald Trump’s sketchy “voter fraud” panel to promote his own gubernatorial candidacy.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is asking the Office of Government Ethics and White House counsel to investigate whether Kobach violated the Hatch Act by allegedly leveraging his position as vice chair of the commission to gain an edge in Kansas’ governor’s race.
The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from doing certain kinds of partisan campaign work during the course of their official duties.
Kristen Clarke, the Lawyers’ Committee’s president and executive director, said in a statement that Kobach “appears to be using his official role as head of the so-called Election Integrity Commission to promote his candidacy for Governor of Kansas.”
“We deem the President’s Election Integrity Commission to be a baseless tool to promote voter suppression and Mr. Kobach‘s unlawful abuse of his role as head of the Commission for partisan ends only underscores the illegitimacy of the Commission itself,” she said.
Among his possible violations, the Lawyers’ Committee listed Kobach’s promotion on Twitter and Facebook of interviews he conducted as a representative of the panel, a section on his campaign website which “further highlights Mr. Kobach’s role on the Commission” and his discussion of his role on the panel during campaign appearances.
“Mr. Kobach’s Twitter profile states that the page is “Paid for by Kansas for Kobach,” and his Facebook page displays his campaign logo,” the committee noted. “The Twitter and Facebook pages collectively contain at least 28 different posts in which Mr. Kobach has described his work on the Commission.”
