White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Wednesday scoffed at concerns that the official government procedures that were carried out at the Republican National Convention (RNC) the night before, including a naturalization ceremony, were in violation of a law forbidding the use of government activity to boost political interests, aka the Hatch Act.
“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” Meadows told Politico. “They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, would do the same for Democrats.”
“And so listen, this is a lot of hoopla that’s being made about things, mainly because the convention has been so unbelievably successful,” he added.
Other potential violations besides President Donald Trump hosting a naturalization ceremony included his pardon of an RNC speaker and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo giving his convention speech during an official visit to Jerusalem.
A White House official told TPM that the naturalization ceremony did not violate the Hatch Act because the White House had “publicized the content of the event on a public website” that day.
“The campaign decided to use the publicly available content for campaign purposes,” the White House official said. “There was no violation of law.”
