Conservatives ridiculed White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates for invoking the Hatch Act when asked about whether the cocaine found in the White House on Sunday was President Joe Biden’s or Hunter Biden’s.
“Are you willing to say that that’s not the case? That it [the cocaine] doesn’t belong to them?” a reporter asked Bates on Thursday.
“I don’t have a response to that because we have to be careful about the Hatch Act,” he claimed.
The Hatch Act’s main provision blocks executive branch employees “from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty, in a federal facility or using federal property,” according to the DOJ.
Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project and former Chief Counsel for Nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, told Breitbart News, “Cocaine may be a part of political activities for Hunter Biden, but Congress probably wasn’t high on that idea when it passed the Hatch Act.”
Reporter Jerry Dunleavy also mocked the White House’s response. “That famous Hatch Act provision which doesn’t allow you to say White House cocaine doesn’t belong to the president or his son,” he said.
“Odd that Bates pivots to the Hatch Act and doesn’t deny the question…” former Senate staffer Steve Guest said.
“The Hatch Act?” conservative columnist Byron York posted on Twitter.
“Hatch Act? What? That makes zero sense,” CEO and co-founder of the Federalist Sean Davis tweeted.Uniformed Secret Service officers at the White House discovered the cocaine Sunday evening, prompting an evacuation and a D.C. Fire Department hazmat team’s arrival at the scene. The incident is under investigation by the Secret Service.
Police are seen outside the White House grounds, Sunday night, July 2, 2023, in Washington. The White House was briefly evacuated Sunday evening while President Joe Biden was at Camp David after the Secret Service discovered suspicious powder in a common area of the West Wing, and a preliminary test showed the substance was cocaine, two law enforcement officials said Tuesday. (Anthony Peltier via AP)
A few days later, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) requested a briefing from the Secret Service on their investigation.“We don’t know where Hunter Biden lives unless he is living in the White House,” he said. “That is a concern. … There are pictures. He took pictures of himself smoking crack while he was driving. … It would be difficult to deny that.”
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would not say if the White House supports prosecuting the unknown cocaine smuggler.
“I’m just not gonna get into hypotheticals from here. Let the Secret Service do their job. It’s under their purview. We are confident that they will get to the bottom of it. I’m just not going to get ahead of this at this time,” she told reporters.
“Will any White House staffers be undergoing drug testing as part of this investigation?” a second reporter asked.
“Just not going to get into hypotheticals from here,” Jean-Pierre replied. “The White House is subject to rigorous guidelines that include drug testing. So, we will take any action that is appropriate and warranted.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
