Tag: tweets

Sessions, Oprah, Obama but not the Russians in Trump’s On-Going Twitter War

On February 20, 2018, DNC deputy communications director Adrienne Watson responded to a recent series of tweets by President Trump.  Last week’s Russian election meddling indictments renewed the debate about whether Obama did enough to counter Russian interference when he was in office.

After continued criticism about how he is handling Russia’s meddling in the 2016 Election, President Trump took to Twitter. Watson details Trump’s tweets from his attacks on Oprah, down to the Pennsylvania redistricting map. Trump’s tweets from last week and even today, included no mention of prevention of future Russian attacks on US elections, he did not condemn the Kremlin’s attack of the 2016-Presidential and he adamantly denies that the Mueller investigation will or has uncovered any unsavory connections between him and the Russians.

Trump Tweet Fox News Says Russia Has not dirt on Trump

Why Doesn’t Sessions Go After Obama for the Russian Meddling?

On February 21st Trump lashed out at Attorney General Jeff Sessions,  asking why he isn’t investigating the Obama-administration for being weak in the face of Russian aggression.

Trump Tweet why didnt Sessions go after Obama

Pressuring Sessions to investigate Obama’s knowledge of Russian involvement is somewhat awkward because Session’s involvement with Russian government officials was investigated by the Department of Justice in March 2017.  Sessions stated during his confirmation hearing in January 2017, that he “did not have communications with the Russians.” It was later determined by the Justice Department that he met with Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak twice in the preceding 12 months.

Sessions clarified the apparent disharmony between his sworn confirmation testimony and the two meetings with the Russian ambassador by stating that he “never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign.”

The President seemed to forget that Sessions recused himself from the Russian investigation in June 2017.  “I recused myself not because of any asserted wrongdoing on my part during the campaign,” Sessions stated. “But because a Department of Justice regulation, 28 CFR 45.2, required it.”

What did the Obama Administration Know and When?

From the Mueller indictment, we now know that in 2015 the Russians purchased advertisements on social-media sites designed to influence public opinion, but it remains unclear whether the F.B.I. or any other intelligence agencies were aware of the purchases and other election interferences in real time.

By the summer of 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies had collected a “critical mass” of data about Russian efforts to intervene in the election. This prompted John Brennan, the then director of the C.I.A., to brief Obama and other top advisers in August about the threat.  But President Obama and his advisors didn’t learn of the extent of the Russian inference, including the use of fake personas online, or that the Russians were exploiting Facebook and other social-media sites until after the 2016 elections former administration officials said. “We knew some things, but didn’t have all the pieces,” a senior official said, referring to Obama’s final weeks in office.

Who is Tougher on Russia?  It Depends on Who You Ask.

From the beginning, President Trump has vehemently denied that his campaign and administration had any knowledge of Russian meddling in the election.  As detailed in his tweets, he also continues to state that the current administration has been “tougher on Russia than Obama.”

Trump Tweet Im tougher on Russia than Obama

Although the President claims the Obama administration didn’t take proper actions against Russia, Obama did make strides towards imposing sanctions against Russia, with a major retaliatory measures coming after the 2016 Election, when the Obama Administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats accused of interfering  with the Presidential Election, sanctioning three companies and also closing two Russian diplomatic offices in the United States.

Trump has yet to impose sanctions against the Russians, after the overwhelming passage of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act by Congress last year. The sanctions were to take effect on January 29th.  The law gives the administration the power to target powerful Russian elites and companies and countries that do business with blacklisted Russian military and intelligence entities.  The administration also failed to meet a deadline to identify Russian entities and individuals which would be added to a sanctions list. Instead, the Administration published a list of 96 known prominent Russian Oligarchs, as noted on Twitter by Tom ParfittMoscow Correspondent at The London Times.

Parfitt Tweet Russians added to list all from Forbes

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said February 14 that the Trump administration is “actively working” on imposing sanctions on Russia over its interference in the 2016 US election.  And on February 20th, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders stated that Donald Trump “has done a number of things to put pressure on Russia and be tough on Russia.” We’ll have to see what’s coming and maybe we’ll find out exactly what Trump has done to put pressure on Russia, monitor Twitter.

 

Copyright ©2018 National Law Forum, LLC
This post was written by Alessandra de Faria and Jennifer Schaller of the National Law Forum.
Read more coverage of Trump’s tweets and other political news at the Election page of the National Law Review.

Employee’s Disparaging and Misleading Tweets May Be Protected Under NLRA: Holy Guacamole!

Guacamole, Food, disparaging social mediaRetail employers dismayed by employees publicly airing workplace grievances in disparaging social media posts must think twice before taking disciplinary action.  On August 18, 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) confirmed the finding by Administrative Law Judge Susan A. Flynn that Chipotle’s social media policy forbidding employees from posting “incomplete” or “inaccurate” information, or from making “disparaging, false, or misleading statements” on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites violates Section 8(a)(1) of the National Relations Labor Act (“the Act”).

Chipotle discovered that an employee responded to a customer’s tweet thanking Chipotle for a free food offer, by tweeting back: “@ChipotleTweets, nothing is free, only cheap #labor. Crew members make only $8.50hr how much is that steak bowl really?”  Then, attaching a news article describing how hourly workers at Chipotle were required to work on snow days while certain high-level employees were not, the employee tweeted his displeasure, specifically referencing Chipotle’s Communications Director: “Snow day for ‘top performers’ Chris Arnold?”  Informed by his manager that Chipotle considered his tweets to be in violation of Chipotle’s social media policy, the employee removed them at Chipotle’s request.  Then, several weeks later, Chipotle fired the employee after he circulated a petition about employees not receiving required breaks.

Finding the provision in Chipotle’s policy prohibiting employees from spreading “incomplete” or “inaccurate” information to be unlawful, Judge Flynn opined that: “An employer may not prohibit employee postings that are merely false or misleading. Rather, in order to lose the [NLRA]’s protection, more than a false or misleading statement by the employee is required; it must be shown that the employee had a malicious motive.” Judge Flynn also found the policy provision prohibiting “disparaging” statements to be unlawful, explaining that it “could easily encompass statements protected by Section 7 [of the NLRA]” including “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”   Although Chipotle’s social media policy contained a disclaimer that the policy “does not restrict any activity that is protected by the National Relations Labor Act, whistleblower laws, or any other privacy rights,” Judge Flynn concluded that this “sentence does not serve to cure the unlawfulness of the foregoing provisions.”

The NLRB adopted Judge Flynn’s decision that Chipotle was wrong, not only for firing the employee, but for attempting to limit his commentary on social media by its unlawfully termed social media policy.  While agreeing with Judge Flynn’s reasons for finding the social media policy unlawful, the NLRB disagreed with Judge Flynn’s finding that Chipotle violated the NLRA by asking the employee to delete the tweets.  In particular, while Judge Flynn opined that the employee engaged in “concerted activity” even though he did not consult with other employees before posting his tweets because “concerted activities include individual activity where individual employees seek to initiate or to induce … group action,”  the NLRB disagreed, asserting, with no true explanation, that it did not find the employee’s conduct to be concerted.  Agreeing that Chipotle violated the NLRA by terminating the employee after he engaged in protected concerted activity by circulating a petition regarding the Company’s break policy, the NLRB required Chipotle to, among other things, post signs acknowledging that its social media policy was illegal, and to re-instate the employee with back pay.

The message from the NLRB to retail employers is that, barring malicious misstatements, speech concerning terms and conditions of employment is often protected activity, even for employees who want to criticize their employers on Twitter and other social media websites.  To avoid Chipotle’s fate, ensure that your social media policies are up to date and provide for the increasing protections afforded to employee social media activity by the NLRB.

ARTICLE BY John M. O’Connor of Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.
©2016 Epstein Becker & Green, P.C. All rights reserved.