BUZZ
A University of Chicago student has filed an ethics complaint against Sen. Elissa Slotkin for her recent suggestion that college graduates who work for the Trump administration might be prosecuted.
“Senator Slotkin, if you thought this was over, you’re wrong,” said student Michael Bicksel in a video he posted on X on Oct. 22 as he held up a copy of an ethics complaint he filed with the U.S. Senate.
“The complaint was submitted to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and argues that Slotkin proposed using congressional investigations and potential prosecutions to frighten young people away from serving in a Republican administration,” Fox News reported.
“The complaint asks the committee to determine whether Slotkin’s comments amounted to ‘improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate,’ a standard described in the Senate Ethics Manual as applying to conduct that may be unethical even if it does not violate a specific law or Senate rule,” the outlet reported.
Speaking Oct. 13 at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, the Michigan Democrat said potential legal problems should be a deterrent against working for Trump.
“I wanna look at these signature cases, and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him,” Slotkin said. “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds like fun. I might get an opportunity.’”
“I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that,” she said. “I want that deterrent message.”
The comments drew widespread criticism as a threat to young conservative graduates looking to work in government, as well as complaints the sentiments were akin to “Bolshevik tactics.”
Bicksel, senior editor at the Chicago Thinker, the student news outlet which broke the news of her comments, has been an outspoken critic of them.
“It is appalling … that an elected leader would go to a premiere American university noted for its commitment to free speech and outline such anti-American plans with such ease. Perhaps even more ironic is Senator Slotkin’s and her party’s obsession with ‘defending democracy,'” he wrote in an Oct. 20 piece.
“She happens to be one of six Democratic lawmakers who encouraged active duty military personnel to disobey ‘illegal orders’ from the Commander-in-Chief.”
