GSA Chief Fires Back at Hatch Act Report

GSA Administrator Lurita Doan weighed in Friday evening with her response to an Office of Special Counsel report concluding that she violated the Hatch Act with her actions during a Jan. 26 meeting at GSA headquarters in which political appointees at the agency received a briefing from a White House aide on the results of the 2006 midterm election.

"When the record is examined in an objective, impartial and fair manner, it is clear that the conclusions of the OSC report are far off the mark and are based on tenuous inferences and careless leaps of logic," Doan's attorney, Michael J. Nardotti Jr., argues in the response. "It is also evident that the report uses inflammatory and conclusory rhetoric to disparage Administrator Doan and mask the deficiencies of its arguments." The OSC report, Nardotti says, fails to show how a discussion allegedly prompted by Doan following the briefing "was connected to any election or any candidate for office." In fact, he argues, "if anything, it was that briefing, which OSC concedes Administrator Doan had no role in preparing or arranging, that may have violated the Hatch Act."

That interpretation of the law would spell trouble for the White House, which has acknowledged holding such briefings at multiple agencies.

We'll be back Monday with a full report on the Doan response.