Pete Hegseth Campaigns Against Sitting Republican Congressman in Possible Hatch Act Violation

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, personally campaigned against sitting congressman Thomas Massie in the Kentucky Republican primary—an unprecedented deviation from past Pentagon norms. (Massie, who became that rare thing in the Trump era, a Republican who is at least sometimes willing to oppose the president on principle, has since been defeated.)

Hegseth’s appearance raised immediate questions about a potential Hatch Act violation, the law that prohibits executive branch officials from using their official positions to influence elections. The defense secretary’s team preemptively tried to deflect these questions by insisting he would be there “in his personal capacity.”

The Hill gives us the story:

Hegseth will … be in Kentucky on Monday as part of official duties to award Purple Heart medals to 101st Airborne Division soldiers and to administer the oath of enlistment to 190 re-enlistees at Fort Campbell. He will then attend a rally for Gallrein put on by conservative advocacy organization America First Works. … “I can’t remember a secretary of defense coming to a political event like this,” said Tres Watson, a former spokesperson for the Republican Party of Kentucky, adding that he had “significant questions about the legality or appropriateness.” Watson said it was “fairly certain” to be a Hatch Act violation. …

“I’m proud here to stand with Ed Gallrein,” Hegseth said at the event. “President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people trying to help him win, to vote with him when it matters most.”

The Hatch Act exists precisely to prevent the executive branch from using official power and resources to influence elections. The claim that Hegseth was there “in his personal capacity” does not withstand scrutiny: he arrived on official Pentagon travel, in his capacity as a Cabinet secretary, before attending a transparently partisan rally the same day. The message to every Republican member of Congress was unmistakable: if you cross this administration, the full apparatus of the executive branch, including its senior-most military leadership, will be deployed against you, laws and norms banning such abuse of the state machinery be damned.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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