A government watchdog filed an ethics complaint on Wednesday against Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost that urges an investigation into whether the congressman “has abused official resources for political purposes.”
The complaint was filed by The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) and asks for the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to investigate the allegations. The complaint, first obtained by The Daily Wire, said that Frost has used his campaign account on X to publish posts that use official government resources, including photographs, which could be a violation of federal law and House ethics rules regulating the social media activity of Congress.
“Rep. Frost’s social media use has quite clearly abused official resources and is troubling. The law plainly requires strict separation between campaign and official acts to both protect taxpayers from funding political activity, and from unfairly benefitting incumbent members of Congress. Violating such a basic rule in a sphere as public-facing as social media is both an awful reflection on Rep. Frost and the House as a whole. While we await the OCE’s investigation into this matter, the simple response here from Rep. Frost should be to apologize and, at a bare minimum, delete these past posts and cease this activity in the future — we hope that is what he chooses to do,” Kendra Arnold, the executive director of FACT, told The Daily Wire.
FACT included several examples of the posts from Frost, including several that featured photos taken from events which Frost attended. The complaint also noted that House ethics guidelines stipulate that campaign accounts cannot “share, like, retweet, etc., a post from an official social media account.”
Frost, 26, is the youngest member of Congress and was first elected in November 2022. Before his congressional run, Frost worked with March for Our Lives, a Left-leaning group that advocates for gun control.
“The legal violations in this case are clear and there are no facts that can excuse them. In fact, Rep. Frost’s campaign social media accounts demonstrate that he consistently uses official resources for political purposes and that he has used numerous different types of taxpayer-funded resources for his campaign,” the complaint said.
FACT pointed to Frost’s campaign account on X interacting with official House photographs, official House work product, and reposting posts from his official congressional account.
“The Office of Congressional Ethics is responsible for ensuring each Representative fulfills the public trust inherent in the office and that they comply with the House’s ethical standards. Therefore, we urge the Board to immediately investigate whether Representative Frost used official resources for campaign purposes in violation of the House ethics rules,” the complaint said.
FACT has filed similar complaints against other members of Congress this year, including Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).
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