The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to compel special counsel Henry Kerner and his office to file a complaint against top Trump White House aide Kellyanne Conway for Hatch Act violations.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims the special counsel has adopted a policy of no longer filing complaints with the Merit Systems Protection Board for non-Senate confirmed executive branch officials' Hatch Act violations.

The MSPB, a quasi-judicial agency, has the power to take action against federal employees who are found to have violated the act, which blocks them from certain political activities in their capacity as federal government officials.

Tuesday's complaint alleges that OSC policy goes against the U.S. code, which says that when the special counsel finds a non-Senate confirmed official has committed a Hatch Act violation, that finding is then handed over to the MSPB.

Kerner referred his office's findings on Conway, who is not Senate-confirmed, to President Donald Trump for further action in June 2019, and recommended that Conway be removed from her White House job for her Hatch Act violations. Trump refused to follow that guidance, and defended her.

The watchdog said in Tuesday's complaint that the conditions for a MSPB complaint "are indisputably met in Conway's case."

And the lawsuit alleges Conway has continued to violate the Hatch Act since the OSC made its findings, "no less than 60 times (and counting)."

"The upshot is that OSC's inaction will, absent judicial relief, preclude the Hatch Act allegations that were the subject of CREW's complaints (and deemed meritorious by OSC) from ever being brought to the attention of MSPB, the body statutorily charged with adjudicating Hatch Act violations and taking appropriate disciplinary action," Tuesday's complaint reads.

"Moreover, so long as OSC continues to follow its nonenforcement policy, CREW cannot rely on the agency to institute legally-mandated MSPB proceedings in response to future CREW Hatch Act complaints against non-Senate-confirmed presidential appointees, including Conway."

It's unclear if a court will agree it has the authority to order a change in the special counsel's policy, as judges have raised questions about how far the judiciary can reach into the internal actions of federal agencies. The Trump administration is all but certain to raise a similar point in opposing this complaint.

An OSC spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Kerner's office found that Conway violated the Hatch Act "by disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media."

"As a highly visible member of the administration, Ms. Conway's violations, if left unpunished, send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act's restrictions," Kerner wrote in a letter to Trump at the time. "Her actions erode the principal foundation of our democratic system—the rule of law."

The special counsel last year also found that Conway had twice violated the Hatch Act by defending then-GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore while speaking on the White House lawn.

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