Unlawfully appointed acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Chad Wolf is now claiming that he had no clue the naturalization stunt he helped carry out would be used for last week’s Republican National Convention as part of its effort to reelect impeached president Donald Trump, telling ABC News’ Jon Karl that “[n]aturalization ceremonies are what the department does. We do hundreds if not thousands of them every year.”
Well, sure, when the administration isn’t trying to intentionally shut down U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). But Unlawful Chad really wants us to believe that he thought this naturalization ceremony was going to be no different than the thousands of other ceremonies USCIS has done, minus, you know, the taking place at the White House in front of cameras as the most anti-immigrant president in modern American history watches.
Ready to hand Trump—and every Republican—a HUMILIATING defeat? Sign up with Vote Forward to write personalized letters to infrequent, but Democratic-leaning, voters in swing states. Help us wash Trump out of office with a big blue wave of record-breaking turnout.
The fact is that this naturalization stunt was lies on top of lies, and you don’t have to take it from me—take it from some of these new Americans themselves. At least two told The Wall Street Journal that they weren’t informed prior to the ceremony that it would be broadcast as part of the convention, and say they found out only moments before they were sworn in as U.S. citizens by Unlawful Chad that Trump would also be there.
This wasn’t the only incident where Trump’s campaign used people as human props: The New York Times also reported that a wedding planner turned Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official may have also tricked some New York City tenants into appearing in a video that was then shown at the convention. Nope, nothing indecent or deceitful here at all, folks. Carry on.
Well, since a nonpartisan government watchdog has said that Unlawful Chad was unlawfully installed as acting secretary, maybe he missed the ethics training that would have given him a clue that what he was doing was at the very least inappropriate. Others at the department apparently know it: As we’ve noted before, BuzzFeed News’ Hamed Aleaziz reported that in the time since the political stunt, DHS employees were emailed with “a ‘reminder’ about ‘partisan political activity’ and the rules under the … Hatch Act.” I hope someone copied Unlawful Chad on that email.
”Denying that awareness might offer some protection from questions about the Hatch Act, but it raises a number of additional questions,” Philip Bump wrote in The Washington Post. “One, for example: How much confidence might the American public have in the head of the Department of Homeland Security if he’s willing to violate the law to boost Trump’s reelection? How much confidence might they have if he’s willing to mislead reporters about why he does what he does?”
None, is the answer. Now that Unlawful Chad’s finally been officially nominated to his job in a move designed to protect the many anti-immigrant policies put in place under his unlawful tenure, the Senate should give him the boot. Unlawful Chad is also facing repercussions elsewhere for his conduct. A number of House Democrats including Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson have called for a federal investigation into his participation in the political stunt, asking the Office of Special Counsel “to investigate Mr. Wolf’s participation in this event to determine whether it violated the law.”
“On August 25, 2020, Mr. Wolf performed a naturalization ceremony on government property to be aired at the Republican National Convention for the apparent purpose of advancing the President’s reelection,” Thompson wrote in his letter. “This is an unprecedented politicization of the naturalization ceremony.” Relatedly, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has also filed a complaint with the office.
“Thousands of Americans across the country saw this stunt and asked, ‘isn’t there a law against this?’ The answer is yes, there is, the Hatch Act,” CREW executive director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “The Hatch Act isn’t some nebulous, technical code buried deep in some federal manual, it’s the law meant to keep officials from using taxpayer dollars and the authorities of the federal government to keep themselves in power, as totalitarian regimes do.”
