Via Guy Benson:
Federal employees, like all Americans, are entitled to hold passionate political beliefs. Most executive branch federal employees, however, may not engage in certain political activities, thanks to an anti-conflict of interest principle enshrined in a federal law called the Hatch Act. To wit, President Bush requested the resignation of his GSA administrator in 2008 after the US Office of Special Counsel determined she had violated federal law by participating in a video conference with Karl Rove and sending out partisan letters. (The New York Times was scandalized at the time, though I strangely can’t find their editorial calling for Kathleen Sebelius’ head when OSC flagged her for a Hatch Act violation. Then again, the Times’ alleged principles seem to depend entirely on which party is in power). Which brings us to the case of April Sands, an employee at the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), who struck a deal with the agency’s Inspector General to avoid criminal charges related to running afoul of the Hatch Act on numerous occasions. She has openly confessed to breaching federal law as part of her effective plea bargain, but investigators were unable to probe a potential goldmine of incriminating activity: Her email. Why? You guessed it; her hard drive crashed, supposedly wiping out her email records, and resulting in the FEC recycling (i.e., destroying) the hard drive. Sounds familiar. Did I mention that Ms. Sands worked under Lois Lerner when Lerner served as the agency’s Associate General Counsel for Enforcement? Lots of coincidences and similarities, no? […]
This woman’s job was helping to enforce election laws. Here’s a sense of how this “public servant” passed her time at the office, doing a job whose salary was funded by taxpayers:
