{"id":163799,"date":"2026-09-28T12:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/28\/former-bush-ethics-lawyer-trumps-taxpayer-funded-campaign-ad-could-be-an-impeachable-offense\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:22:16","slug":"former-bush-ethics-lawyer-trumps-taxpayer-funded-campaign-ad-could-be-an-impeachable-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/28\/former-bush-ethics-lawyer-trumps-taxpayer-funded-campaign-ad-could-be-an-impeachable-offense\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Bush Ethics Lawyer: Trump\u2019s Taxpayer-Funded Campaign Ad \u2018Could Be An Impeachable Offense\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has found a new way to spend your money on himself. This weekend, the White House rolled out its latest government-paid \u201cpublic service announcement,\u201d and this one doesn\u2019t bother pretending to be something other than a campaign ad, because, well, it is one. The spot is a near-exact copy of a 2024 Trump campaign ad<\/a> \u2014 Trump striding down a hallway, calling on viewers to join his fight to \u201cexpel the warmongers from our government\u201d (the irony is on overload with the man who started a war with Iran) with the old campaign logo trimmed off the end and \u201cPaid for by the U.S. government\u201d slapped on instead. It aired during college football, NFL games, and \u201cFox News Sunday,\u201d a few weeks before the midterms.<\/p>\n

Richard Painter, George W. Bush\u2019s chief White House ethics lawyer, so not a guy who arrived at the resistance by birth, did not mince words, writing on X<\/a>, \u201cthis could be an impeachable offense. @POTUS has no right to use taxpayer money for campaign ads. Congress has expressly prohibited government sponsored political propaganda, which is dangerous for democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Painter is not alone in his assessment. \u201cThe president and his administration have gone from breaking the law to trampling it,\u201d Norm Eisen, who did the ethics job in Barack Obama\u2019s White House and has sued the Trump administration several times, told the New York Times<\/a>. \u201cThe prior ad was bad enough, but this one openly repurposes prior political conduct.\u201d Margaret Dylus-Yukins, senior legal counsel for ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, was just as blunt, \u201cA divisive campaign commercial paid for by the U.S. government defies the Hatch Act\u2019s very purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what does the White House have to say for itself? On Friday, it published a defense with the extremely confident title \u201cPresidential Public Service Announcements Are Nothing New.\u201d<\/a> The argument goes like this: these can\u2019t be campaign ads because Trump isn\u2019t on the ballot and there\u2019s no call to action, and anyway, Bush did it, Obama did it, Biden did it, and so did Woodrow Wilson and FDR.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take those in order. Trump isn\u2019t on the ballot, except that he\u2019s told voters to \u201cpretend\u201d he is. There\u2019s no call to action, except that the new ad asks viewers to join his fight. And Wilson and FDR were selling world wars, which is a different vibe from a midterm cycle.<\/p>\n

To use the technical term, the defense is weak-ass shit. <\/p>\n

The White House leads with the Bush administration\u2019s campaign selling the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law to seniors. Well\u2026 about that. In 2004, the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) found the Bush administration violated the federal appropriations law against propaganda<\/a> with that very Medicare push. Painter told the Times:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThey really shouldn\u2019t have done it the way they did,\u201d Mr. Painter said, referring to the Bush administration ad, which aired before he joined the White House. \u201cEven though it\u2019s nowhere near as bad as this. Nowhere near.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So the White House\u2019s leading example of how normal all this is turns out to be a campaign the government\u2019s auditors called illegal. Cool, great, very airtight.<\/p>\n

This administration treats the Hatch Act as a suggestion. Earlier this month, the Attorney General spoke at a Republican midterm rally<\/a>, and the DOJ waved it off. It has also shown it\u2019s perfectly comfortable treating taxpayer money as a fund for Trump\u2019s friends<\/a>. The Times, citing AdImpact, estimates the government has spent more than $1 million on pro-Trump ads in just the last several days. Trump has a super PAC sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, but why spend his money when he can spend yours?<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Former Bush Ethics Lawyer: Trump\u2019s Taxpayer-Funded Campaign Ad \u2018Could Be An Impeachable Offense\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(image via iStock)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donald Trump has found a new way to spend your money on himself. This weekend, the White House rolled out its latest government-paid \u201cpublic service announcement,\u201d and this one doesn\u2019t bother pretending to be something other than a campaign ad, because, well, it is one. The spot is a near-exact copy of a 2024 Trump campaign ad<\/a> \u2014 Trump striding down a hallway, calling on viewers to join his fight to \u201cexpel the warmongers from our government\u201d (the irony is on overload with the man who started a war with Iran) with the old campaign logo trimmed off the end and \u201cPaid for by the U.S. government\u201d slapped on instead. It aired during college football, NFL games, and \u201cFox News Sunday,\u201d a few weeks before the midterms.<\/p>\n

Richard Painter, George W. Bush\u2019s chief White House ethics lawyer, so not a guy who arrived at the resistance by birth, did not mince words, writing on X<\/a>, \u201cthis could be an impeachable offense. @POTUS has no right to use taxpayer money for campaign ads. Congress has expressly prohibited government sponsored political propaganda, which is dangerous for democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Painter is not alone in his assessment. \u201cThe president and his administration have gone from breaking the law to trampling it,\u201d Norm Eisen, who did the ethics job in Barack Obama\u2019s White House and has sued the Trump administration several times, told the New York Times<\/a>. \u201cThe prior ad was bad enough, but this one openly repurposes prior political conduct.\u201d Margaret Dylus-Yukins, senior legal counsel for ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, was just as blunt, \u201cA divisive campaign commercial paid for by the U.S. government defies the Hatch Act\u2019s very purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what does the White House have to say for itself? On Friday, it published a defense with the extremely confident title \u201cPresidential Public Service Announcements Are Nothing New.\u201d<\/a> The argument goes like this: these can\u2019t be campaign ads because Trump isn\u2019t on the ballot and there\u2019s no call to action, and anyway, Bush did it, Obama did it, Biden did it, and so did Woodrow Wilson and FDR.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take those in order. Trump isn\u2019t on the ballot, except that he\u2019s told voters to \u201cpretend\u201d he is. There\u2019s no call to action, except that the new ad asks viewers to join his fight. And Wilson and FDR were selling world wars, which is a different vibe from a midterm cycle.<\/p>\n

To use the technical term, the defense is weak-ass shit. <\/p>\n

The White House leads with the Bush administration\u2019s campaign selling the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law to seniors. Well\u2026 about that. In 2004, the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) found the Bush administration violated the federal appropriations law against propaganda<\/a> with that very Medicare push. Painter told the Times:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThey really shouldn\u2019t have done it the way they did,\u201d Mr. Painter said, referring to the Bush administration ad, which aired before he joined the White House. \u201cEven though it\u2019s nowhere near as bad as this. Nowhere near.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So the White House\u2019s leading example of how normal all this is turns out to be a campaign the government\u2019s auditors called illegal. Cool, great, very airtight.<\/p>\n

This administration treats the Hatch Act as a suggestion. Earlier this month, the Attorney General spoke at a Republican midterm rally<\/a>, and the DOJ waved it off. It has also shown it\u2019s perfectly comfortable treating taxpayer money as a fund for Trump\u2019s friends<\/a>. The Times, citing AdImpact, estimates the government has spent more than $1 million on pro-Trump ads in just the last several days. Trump has a super PAC sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, but why spend his money when he can spend yours?<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has found a new way to spend your money on himself. This weekend, the White House rolled out its latest government-paid \u201cpublic service announcement,\u201d and this one doesn\u2019t bother pretending to be something other than a campaign ad, because, well, it is one. The spot is a near-exact copy of a 2024 Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":163771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}