Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Sunday that top White House advisor Kellyanne Conway’s comments pushing products from Ivanka Trump’s clothing line on television were “a textbook case of a violation of the law.”
“This was a textbook case of a violation of the law,” Cummings told George Stephanopoulos on “This Week,” per ABC’s transcript.
He said that “anybody else” would be reprimanded or fired for such a violation.
“You cannot go out there as an employee of the government and advertise for Ivanka Trump or anyone else, their products. You can’t do that,” Cummings said. “Anybody else would be subject to a minimum probably of a reprimand, or they could literally lose their job over this. In any other department.”
He said that Conway’s comments were “not flippant.”
“As a matter of fact, she said, she made it clear, I am going to give some free advertisement today for Ivanka Trump,” Cummings said. “That’s just not right.”
Cummings said that he thought Conway’s promotion was “intentional” and “very blatant.”
“The problem here, George, is that the person who will mete out the punishment, if you will, will be the president,” he added. “And it seems as if this may not be a big deal to him.”
In a Thursday appearance on Fox News, Conway told viewers to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.”
“I’m going to give a free commercial here,” she said. “Go buy it today, everybody.”
Cummings and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Thursday asked the the Office of Government Ethics to recommend possible disciplinary action to the White House over Conway’s comments.
They wrote that Conway’s statements “clearly violate the ethical principles for federal employees and are unacceptable.”
