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And the second shoe dropping on that purge of Trump appointees....
Herschel Walker, and Mehmet Oz, Refuse Biden Demand to Resign from Presidential Council on Sports President Joe Biden on Wednesday asked two Trump-appointed members of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition to resign — who is also running in Senate races — to resign or be fired, according to a report.
Two of former President Donald Trump’s appointees — Herschel Walker, who’s running in the Georgia Republican Senate primary, and Mehmet Oz, who’s running in the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary — were asked by Biden to resign from their two-year posts as of Wednesday at 6 p.m., according to CNN.
Trump-appointed Walker and Oz to sit on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition in 2018 to two-year terms and were reappointed in December 2020, shortly before he left office. Since both are running for office, the report stated that it goes against the current administration’s policy not to allow federal candidates to serve on presidential boards.
Walker responded on social media by bashing Biden and saying he’s not a quitter.
“President Biden is so scared about us beating Raphael Warnock that he has asked me to resign from my unpaid position on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition,” Walker wrote. “I’m not a quitter so you are going to have to fire me.”
Oz had a similar response to Biden, saying he would not resign.
“President Trump appointed me to two terms on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition. The White House just emailed me demanding my resignation by the end of the day,” he said on Wednesday. “Clearly, Joe Biden can’t be around anyone who doesn’t completely fall in line with his fear-mongering authoritarian one-size-fits-all COVID handling. I am proud of my service and will not resign.”
Members of the president’s council are considered special government employees, which, according to the Hatch Act, are not allowed to be a candidate in any partisan election, which Walker and Oz are both doing by running in the May primary in their respective states.
Biden asked more of Trump appointees to resign from their posts last fall. Some of those include Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, and H.R. McMaster, all on the military service academy advisory boards.
My favorite part of
Dr. Oz's response :
It’s sad that he would politicize such an important issue like health," Oz said. "The doctor he should ask to resign is Dr. Fauci, for a multitude of obvious reasons."
Several comments after the Fox article explain it better than the article itself. Here's just two:
cajunrajunms
Running for office is not a violation of the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act prevents government employees from campaigning for someone that is running for public office where you also let everyone know what government agency you work for. I worked for the Postal Service for 38 years and we as government employees fell under the Hatch Act. The only thing that we were prevented from doing was to actually wear our uniform to a campaign rally. It was forbidden and was a violation. Going home first and changing into civilian clothes then attending the rally was not a violation. Dr. Oz and Mr. Walker are not violating anything, and the Hatch Act was never intended to prevent a person from running. As usual Biden has been ill advised and is too old to understand that he got bad advice.
hoodoo
True. Running for office is not a violation. If that were the case every congressman running for reelection would be in violation.
