The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) has found additional evidence showing Democratic Illinois Rep. Sean Casten allegedly abused official government resources for political purposes.
FACT filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Casten with the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) in July and the watchdog is now sending OCE further evidence of Casten allegedly abusing official government resources by posting government content onto his campaign’s social media account. (RELATED: Eric Swalwell Subject Of Ethics Complaint For Allegedly Abusing Official Resources)
READ THE FULL LETTER:
“In short, Rep. Casten’s intent to violate the law has become obvious. Since the complaint was filed, Rep. Casten has continued to regularly use official government resources for political purposes despite his office clearly being well aware of the law. For example, the attached exhibit contains seventeen examples, over period of just nine days, where Casten used official content on his campaign social media account. Additionally, Rep. Casten continues to link directly to his official account from his campaign account,” FACT wrote in a letter Thursday to OCE.
Federal law prohibits Congressional representatives from using official resources for political purposes, with any taxpayer funded resource falling under the official designation. The House ethics manual also instructs members not to use official government resources for political purposes. Likewise, a 2018 House Ethics Committee memo told lawmakers not to use their campaign Twitter account to retweet posts from their official Congressional account.
📺Watch an overview of #ESG month this past July.
I’ll continue to talk about the importance of preserving consumer choice and investor freedom. pic.twitter.com/zFkaEO9jeB
— Rep. Sean Casten (@RepCasten) August 4, 2023
FACT’s Thursday letter to the OCE cites numerous examples of Casten’s campaign account retweeting his Congressional account. For example, Casten’s campaign account retweeted a video posted by his official account from a Congressional hearing about Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing.
“Rep. Casten’s continued violations demonstrate willful intent and are quite telling. He is not only responsible for understanding the law, but also for ensuring that both he and his staff abide by it. The law violated here is one of the most basic, common sense ethics rules, which is covered plainly in the House Ethics manual. Yet even after an ethics complaint was filed and he cannot legitimately claim ignorance of this law, he continues to repeatedly violate it,” FACT Executive Director Kendra Arnold said in a statement.
Casten’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.