Three senior Trump administration officials are accused of using their government positions to boost a Republican senator’s reelection campaign, triggering a formal request for a federal investigation.
Democracy Defenders Fund and Reporters Without Borders filed the complaint Monday against FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over an Oct. 13 rally in Wasilla for Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK). Trump headlined the event and called all three officials to the stage.
Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders North America, took aim at Carr’s participation in particular, calling it a “shocking new low for his politicization of the office.”
“This administration keeps testing the boundaries of our democratic guardrails, and this is just the latest example,” said Norm Eisen, executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund.
“Appointees can’t just mix official and political activity, and they can’t lean on their official responsibilities to support a political candidate,” he added.
The groups asked the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to investigate possible Hatch Act violations.
According to the complaint, Carr said he was speaking in his “personal capacity,” moments after Trump announced an upcoming FCC vote on a $162 million Alaska broadband investment. Carr then turned to the agency’s work in the state.
“We are committed to working with Senator Sullivan until we can finish the job of getting every single person in Alaska connected to high-speed internet,” Carr said.
Burgum and Lutnick discussed administration work, including the Alaska LNG pipeline, the groups say in the complaint, and neither offered a personal-capacity disclaimer after Trump introduced them by their official titles.
Burgum also told the crowd that Trump would get the Alaska Permanent Fund doubled, according to the complaint.
The groups note that the only time either secretary mentioned Sullivan was when Lutnick referred to an Oval Office meeting with the president and the senator.
“With Dan Sullivan … we announced that project in the Oval Office,” Lutnick said, before turning to his negotiations with South Korea over a stake in the pipeline.
The Office of Special Counsel found that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated the Hatch Act with a 2020 Republican National Convention speech focused almost entirely on the State Department’s work.
“Brendan Carr has annihilated any sense of independence the FCC once had, turning it into a political weapon to punish anyone President Trump sees as an enemy,” Weimers said.
“We kindly request that you open an investigation to determine whether FCC Chairman Carr, Secretary Burgum, or Secretary Lutnick violated the Hatch Act and to take appropriate action if so,” the complaint said.
The Office of Special Counsel confirmed it received the complaint but declined to comment further, The Hill reported.