The Office of Government Ethics (OGE) website experienced outages late last week due to “an extraordinary volume of contacts.”
OGE sent out a series of tweets alerting the public to the potential disruptions they might encounter in contacting the agency and said the high volume was due to “contacts from citizens about recent events.” Users were reportedly encountering error messages on Thursday and Friday when attempting to reach the site.
While OGE wasn’t specific as to what the “recent events” were, it’s quite likely that the high volume of traffic was from people interested in the incident involving Kellyanne Conway and the accusations she faced about violating federal ethics laws when she discussed Ivanka Trump’s products during a television interview.
OGE sent five tweets about the high volume of contacts it received and its role in ethics investigations:
1/OGE’s website, phone system and email system are receiving an extraordinary volume of contacts from citizens about recent events.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) February 9, 2017
2/OGE works to prevent ethics violations. OGE does not have investigative or enforcement authority.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) February 9, 2017
3/Congress, GAO, the FBI, Inspectors General, and the Office of Special Counsel have the authority to conduct investigations.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) February 9, 2017
4/ When OGE learns of possible ethics violations, OGE contacts the agency, provides guidance & asks them to notify OGE of any action taken.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) February 9, 2017
5/OGE is actively following this agency-contact process.
— U.S. OGE (@OfficeGovEthics) February 9, 2017
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked OGE’s director to review the incident involving Conway and report back on any disciplinary actions the agency felt might be necessary.
OGE clarified in its tweets that the agency does not conduct investigations or prosecute ethics violations and only provides guidance to an agency when it learns about a possible ethics violation.
The White House said that Conway had been “counseled,” and Conway also said in a tweet that she had the support of President Trump.
