A former Trump administration official has been fined and banned from working a government job for the next fours years, after investigators found that she violated the Hatch Act.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel penalized Lynne Patton who served as Housing and Urban Development regional administrator for New York and New Jersey, over a video she produced with New York City Housing Authority residents to air at the 2020 Republican National Convention, according to Politico.
She was fined $1,000 and barred from federal employment for four years after abusing her position to aid Donald Trump’s re-election efforts.
Earlier in 2019 she posted to Facebook that she “honestly [didn’t] care anymore” whether she was violating the Hatch Act with her tweets. At the time the same Office of Special Counsel had reprimanded her for using her official government Twitter account to promote political tweets and displaying a red “USA” hat sold by the Trump campaign in her office.
Before she was appointed to her position at HUD, she was vice president of the Eric Trump Foundation and reportedly planned his wedding.
The Hatch Act of 1939 bars top-level government officials other than the president and vice president from taking part in political activity.
