You've probably heard that Kellyanne Conway "violated ethics standards" by supposedly using her position within the White House to "hawk Ivanka Trump's products." Only a person bending over backwards to disregard all context or common sense could possibly accept this statement as true, but hey, there are a lot of people like that in Washington D.C.
To listen to the coverage of this, you'd think Conway blatantly abused an opportunity to go on television to deliver a shameless commercial for Ivanka's stuff when she should have been talking about the issues of the day, and that she somehow abused her position of power and influence to muscle people into buying said products.
None of this is what happened. Conway was only talking about Ivanka's stuff because it was in the news, and she was in a position of responding to a massive boycott attempt against the brand. This included a pressure campaign against Macy's, which was ultimately successful, to pull the brand from its shelves. Against the backdrop of all this idiocy, Conway defended Ivanka's right to sell merchandise and opined that it's good stuff worth buying.
That is about as far from a "misuse of position" as a thing can be, but good luck telling that to Walter Shaub:
OGE Director Walter Shaub told the White House in a letter Thursday that he remains concerned with Conway's "misuse of position."
In an interview on Fox News Channel on Feb. 9, Conway raved about Ivanka Trump merchandise and encouraged viewers to "go buy Ivanka's stuff." A day earlier, President Trump had attacked Nordstrom department stores for dropping his daughter's line of clothes and accessories.
The ethics office recommended discipline because federal rules prohibit executive branch employees from endorsing products. The White House concluded that she was speaking "in a light, off-hand manner while attempting to stand up for a person she believed had been unfairly treated."
"Not taking disciplinary action against a senior official under such circumstances risks undermining the ethics program," Shaub wrote to a White House lawyer.
No. Not taking disciplinary action in this case means refusing to use the letter of the law as a bludgeon when the situation obviously doesn't call for it.
So what would be a legitimate case to apply here? First, let's go a little further in defining what it's not.
For one thing, it should not involve entrapment. If you don't want a White House officials talking about a particular brand of products, don't make a big issue out of this product's existence such that it becomes a big news story and a White House official is being asked on TV to comment about it.
It also should not involve a simple expression of support for an American business. Politicians make appearances at businesses all the time. They often address workers and company leadership. If a politician says, "Congratulations on the fine products you make here," did that politician violate ethics rules by "endorsing the product"? Of course not. He or she is just saying something nice about an American business.
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But isn't there a case to be made against Conway because she actually told people to go out and buy Ivanka's products? No, because the whole context of the conversation was asking her to respond to activists and protesters who were telling everyone not to buy them. They were the ones who made Ivanka's brand a political issue, not Kellyanne Conway. Asking Conway to comment on it as the political issue it had become, and then claiming she violated ethics rules by doing so, is absurd.
When President Trump or his White House staff start showing up in public or on television and telling people they should buy one brand over another when there is no relevant context for which to be commenting on the matter at all, then you can probably make a case for an ethics complaint. But in this case, there is none, and Walter Shaub's insistence on bringing one makes him sound like another sniveling bureaucrat weasel named Walter:
