Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ call to crash the NYT’s switchboard may be a First Amendment violation – By Richard Painter (dailykos.com) / Sept 6 2018
By now, you’ve all heard about Sarah Huckabee Sanders urging Trump supporters to call The New York Times and demand that it reveal the identity of the anonymous White House staffer. As Hunter pointed out, this is a pretty egregious ethics violation.
Well, former Bush 43 ethics counsel Richard Painter thinks it’s even worse than that. He thinks Sanders trampled on the First Amendment.
“I think she is using her official position to interfere with the freedom of the press,” Painter told Newsweek Thursday. “Using an official Twitter page and putting out the number of The New York Times and saying everyone should call and harass The New York Times about this, I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing for the U.S. government to be doing.”
(snip)
The former White House ethics chief added that Sanders’s tweets threaten First Amendment rights more than Trump frequently name-calling “failing New York Times” because she disseminated the newspaper’s phone number, and that the Times could possibly seek and be granted an injunction in federal court.
Considering that Sanders works for a president who thinks protesting should be illegal, it comes as no surprise that she has joined her boss’s war on the First Amendment.
But if you ask the Princess of Lies, she’ll probably say she’s just doing her job. Last month, she told her dad, Mike Huckabee, on his TBN weekend show that she believes her primary duty is to “give his message.” Well, Sarah, we got the message loud and clear. This White House has no regard for those who dare to speak out against it. But despite your attempts to warn us and peddle feeble explanations, we will persist.
