‘Women for Trump’ is hosting ‘an evening to empower’ event featuring Kellyanne Conway as a special guest

AP Photo/Susan Wals

The Trump campaign will be hosting a Women for Trump event titled "An Evening to Empower", featuring White House counselor Kellyanne Conway as a "special guest" this week in Tampa, Florida.
The August 22 event will commemorate the 99th anniversary of the 19th amendment in 1920, and will also be attended by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Conway, one of the president’s top advisors and his 2016 campaign manager, has previously been rebuked by a federal watchdog agency for engaging in partisan political activity as a federal employee, in violation of the Hatch Act.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The Trump campaign will be hosting a Women for Trump event featuring White House counselor Kellyanne Conway as a "special guest" this week in Tampa, Florida.

The August 22 event, titled "An Evening to Empower", will commemorate the 99th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920 and will also be attended by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

While the release for the event stated that Florida’s First Lady Casey DeSantis would also speak at the event, Politico reported DeSantis had to cancel because the event conflicted with the planned execution of a death-row inmate.

A Trump campaign official told the outlet that during executions of prisoners, everyone from the Governor’s office is "locked down" and does not appear publicly according to state protocol.

According to a press release sent out by the campaign, the event "will include a presentation by the Trump Victory Leadership Initiative (TVLI), a nationwide effort designed to mobilize volunteers, register and engage voters in an effort to re-elect President Trump and to support down-ballot republicans in 2020."

The event appears to be aimed at turning out female voters in Florida, a critical battleground state for 2020 that Trump carried in 2016 by just 1.2 percentage points over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"Women across America know that President Trump has made empowering women a top priority. We are excited to see early movement not only in Tampa, but across the country to Keep America Great," the Trump campaign’s Coalitions Director Hannah Castillo said in the release.

Conway, one of the president’s top advisors and his 2016 campaign manager, has been previously scrutinized and rebuked by the federal government’s independent ethics watchdog for openly engaging in partisan political campaign activity while employed by the federal government in violation of the Hatch Act of 1973.

In June, the Office of the Special Counsel (not to be confused with the office of special counsel Robert Mueller within the Department of Justice), issued a scathing report slamming Conway as a "repeat offender" of violating the Act and recommended she be "removed from federal service."

Specifically, the report said she violated the Act on multiple occasions by "disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media."

Conway has been openly dismissive of the federal law she violated, saying in May, "if you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work…let me know when the jail sentence begins."

The nonpartisan ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which has filed multiple complains with the OSC for Hatch Act violations, called for her to resign after the OSC’s report in June.

A spokesperson for CREW did not immediately respond to INSIDER’s request for comment on Conway appearing at the Trump event on Monday.

NOW WATCH: Why the US border facilities are ‘concentration camps,’ according to historians

Source: Business Insider – gpanetta@businessinsider.com (Grace Panetta)