Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro got too political earlier this year when he used a trip to Britain to urge the reelection of President Biden and to denigrate former President Donald Trump — and ended up violating the Hatch Act, the government’s Office of Special Counsel has concluded.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Del Toro blasted Mr. Trump as not aligned with America’s “core principles” and said NATO would suffer without “the mature leadership that President Biden has provided.” And in response to questions after a speech, Mr. Del Toro complained that Mr. Trump “aligns himself with autocratic dictators.”
OSC recommended Mr. Biden punish Mr. Del Toro for those words, saying that while he self-reported the incidents, he has been strikingly defiant in refusing to accept that he crossed lines.
“Secretary Del Toro’s statements with overt reference to the election conveyed electoral support for one candidate and opposition to another candidate, and thus, constituted political activity. Accordingly, because he made these statements while acting in his official capacity, he violated the Hatch Act,” special counsel Hampton Dellinger wrote to Mr. Biden.
The Hatch Act is the federal law that prohibits mixing politics with government business. The special counsel is charged with policing violations.
Endorsing or opposing the election of a candidate is considered the classic transgression of the act.
Mr. Del Toro defended his comments as the kind of normal support a high-ranking national security official would give to his president while on a trip abroad.
Michael R. Bromwich, the secretary’s lawyer, said the offending words were “fragments of answers he gave” to reporters’ questions — and foreign reporters at that.
“Again, there is no evidence that any member of the audience for any of Secretary Del Toro’s statements, other than his own staff and the U.S. Embassy staff, is eligible to vote in U.S. elections,” Mr. Bromwich wrote in an official response to the OSC. “The determination that his statements violated the Hatch Act ignores the context in which the statements were made.”
The lawyer also said Mr. Del Toro was left with a difficult choice. If he hadn’t answered the reporter’s questions, he might have been seen as “not fully supportive” of Mr. Biden.
“That could well have proved embarrassing on the international stage to Secretary Del Toro, President Biden, and the Biden administration,” the lawyer said.
Mr. Dellinger, the special counsel, said Mr. Del Toro showed a “refusal to take responsibility.”
He pointed out that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has repeatedly called on his department employees to respect the lines between their work and politics, with a special emphasis on Senate-confirmed positions such as Mr. Del Toro’s.
Indeed, Mr. Del Toro himself issued a new Hatch Act warning to Navy employees in July, ordering personnel to complete their training on how to avoid violations.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the OSC report is “currently being reviewed.”
“As public servants, we uphold (the Department of Defense’s) longstanding tradition of remaining apolitical as we carry out our responsibilities,” she said. “It’s important that we maintain the trust and confidence of the American people, which requires us to avoid any action that could apply the support of any political party, candidate or campaign.”
In one ironic moment in the BBC interview, Mr. Del Toro was defending Mr. Biden when the interviewer asked about the president’s fitness to serve for another term.
The secretary said the president was “as sound as anyone that I know.”
Six months after those comments, Mr. Biden withdrew from the presidential race after questions about his fitness swamped his candidacy.
• Mike Glenn contributed to this report.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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