Betsy DeVos, the longtime Education Secretary for the Trump Administration, is under investigation for a possible violation of the Hatch Act after appearing on Fox News, as reported by Politico.
The Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) appointed an attorney named Eric Johnson to investigate DeVos after she criticized Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in an interview in early September, with a video of that same interview being posted on the Education Department’s official YouTube page.
DeVos, in response to a question about Biden’s promise to roll back many of the school choice policies that DeVos has championed, said that Biden has “turned his back on the kids that we’re talking about, and he’s turned his face in favor of the teachers unions…it’s really shameful.”
A complaint was submitted to the OSC by a far-left blog called “Checks and Balances Project,” run by a left-wing activist named Scott Peterson. After Johnson had been assigned to the case, he told Peterson in an interview that “we’ll investigate the matter in your complaint,” and claimed that “the incident seems very well documented.”
DeVos is only the second major Trump Administration official to come under investigation for possible Hatch Act violations, with the first being former Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway; in that investigation, the OSC simply sent a letter to President Trump advising that he discipline her, but the president ignored the recommendation. Conway eventually resigned from her position in late August for unrelated personal reasons.