ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Multiple legal experts and former White House officials allege that Kellyanne Conway’s TV endorsement of the Ivanka Trump brand violated ethics rules governing executive branch employees.
Conway, counselor to the president, made the remarks on Fox News Thursday morning, responding to the recent decision by Nordstrom to remove the Ivanka Trump brand from its shelves.
“This is just a wonderful line. I own some of it, I fully — I’m going to give a free commercial here,” Conway said. “Go buy it today, everybody, you can find it online.”
Former White House ethics officials and other legal experts said Conway’s endorsement appears to be a clear-cut violation of an ethics regulation barring executive branch employees from endorsing products and using their public office for the private gain of friends.
The comments earned a rare public rebuke from House Oversight Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz. A spokesman confirmed to ABC News that Chaffetz called the promotion “clearly over the line” and “unacceptable.”
Kathleen Clark, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the D.C. Bar Rules of Professional Conduct Review Committee, told ABC News the conduct “broke the law.”
“It is accurate to say that she broke the law. It’s not a criminal law. It’s a regulation,” Clark said, adding that the action would normally prompt some type of “employment discipline” within the White House.
Norm Eisen, former ethics czar for the Obama White House, said on MSNBC that the comments amounted to “a violation of the rules, pure and simple.”
“I imagine that you are going to see complaints flowing in,” Eisen said. “The responsibility to oversee this in the first instance is with the White House counsel, Don McGahn; he is going to need to look at the rules, look at the president and decide what range of penalties might apply.”
Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in the Bush White House, would not say in an interview that Conway “broke the law,” but he spelled out what the regulation clearly prohibits.
“It is a violation of federal ethics regulations prohibiting use of public office for private gain for any government employee in an official speech, an official capacity TV interview or any similar communication to promote the products or services of a particular private business belonging to the employee’s own family, the president’s family, a friend, a campaign contributor or anyone else,” Painter said. “That was strictly forbidden in the Bush administration because it is illegal.”
Former White House Cabinet Secretary Chris Lu said on Twitter that if officials in the Obama White House were caught saying similar comments, it likely would have cost them their job.
ABC News has requested comment from the White House, the Office of Government Ethics, and the office of House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, but has not immediately received any responses.
Nordstrom has said its decision to remove Ivanka Trump’s clothing line is related to sales and was not politically motivated.
From his personal Twitter account, President Donald Trump on Wednesday tweeted that Nordstrom treated his daughter “unfairly.” The tweet was then retweeted by the official POTUS account. Ivanka Trump said in an earlier statement that she was no longer going to be “involved with the management or operations of” her brand or the Trump Organization.
On Wednesday, Eisen criticized Trump for his tweet about Nordstrom and suggested that Nordstrom should sue under unfair competition laws that prohibit the type of behavior displayed in Trump’s tweet.
“I do believe Nordstrom has a colorful claim,” he said. “This will be another place where the courts will remind him he’s not above the law.”
On Twitter, Eisen even offered to help Nordstrom should the company decide to file a suit. Eisen is an outspoken legal critic of the president and is already leading another lawsuit against him over the emoluments clause.
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