Watchdog defends an explosive report seeking to shoot Conway, says he's not "animated" towards her

Under the shots of the White House Trump for an explosive report seeking to dismiss senior advisor Kellyanne Conway, special advocate Henry Kerner said in an interview with Fox News that he was not there. had "no animosity" towards him while defending the work of his team.

At the same time, he showed deference to President Trump, pointing out the decision to fire Conway alone.

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"We respect his decision and, of course, the president has any option he wants: reprimand or not reprimand," Kerner said. "It's at the discretion of the president and we respect that."

Kerner's comments come after the special board office, separate from the office with a similar name previously headed by Robert Mueller, issued a scathing report that Conway had violated the Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of federal employees, by denigrating the democratic president. candidates while speaking officially "during his appearances in the media. The report recommended that she be removed from the federal government.

But the White House has shown no sign of action against Conway. She retaliated by calling the report "unprecedented" and suggesting that it was influenced by politics.

"The unprecedented actions of the legal counsel's office against Kellyanne Conway are deeply flawed and violate her constitutional rights to free speech and due process," Deputy Press Secretary Steven Groves said in a statement. "… His decisions seem to be influenced by the pressure of the media and Liberal organizations – and perhaps the OSC should be aware of its own mandate to act fairly, impartially and non-politically, and not hurt interpret or turn the Hatch Act into weapons. "

The report and the response to it promptly push Kerner, named by Trump, into a political storm.

In his interview with Fox News, Kerner said his office had "several discussions" with the White House lawyer and that they had the OSC report "for weeks". He stated that he "was not a situation with no tomorrow. "

"I am a candidate named Trump, I have no animosity towards Kellyanne," he added. "My job is to ensure that the federal workforce remains depoliticized and as fair as possible."

Kerner said the recommendation to remove Conway from the White House was a "recommendation" only.

The official response from the White House came in the form of a letter to Kerner from White House lawyer Pat Cipollone.

The letter, dated June 11, contained a point-by-point rebuttal of the OSC's report and stated that the OSC "is based on multiple fundamental legal and factual errors, makes unfounded and unsupported claims to the OSC." 39 against a close adviser to the President, is the product of a manifestly unfair process that ignored the legal requirements for notice and that was influenced by various inappropriate considerations. "

Kerner, citing media interviews with Conway, said that not recommending disciplinary action was "a bad signal for federal employees."

"Even the most senior people will respect the law," he said. "If she's going to break the law and make fun of that … how is the Hatch law going to impose any kind of discipline on [other federal employees]? "

The purpose of the Hatch Act is to ensure that federal programs are "administered in a non-partisan manner, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace and to ensure that federal employees advance on the basis of merit and not on political affiliation, "according to the newspaper. CSOs. The office is an independent federal agency that monitors compliance with this law and others.

Kerner also explained that there is a specific unit of the Hatch Act in the OSC, which is an independent oversight agency. Kerner said the unit was "totally non-partisan and non-political" and defended his report as "non-partisan".

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The OSC's own report indicated that in an interview with "Fox & Friends" on Feb. 19, Conway "insinuated that Senator Booker was" sexist "and" a tiny "motivational speaker," the Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, "was lying" about her ethnicity Conway also "attacked" former representative Beto O'Rourke for not "thinking that women running were good enough to be presidents" .

In its conclusion, the OSC stated that Conway "had a thorough knowledge of the Hatch Act and that it had already been acknowledged that she had broken the law by engaging in similar behavior."