One duty of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is to oversee social media usage by members of Congress. The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) has filed a complaint against Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) for supposedly using "official resources" on social media for political purposes.
The Daily Wire, which first received the complaint from FACT, detailed how Rep. Frost's posts on X (formerly Twitter) featured or reposted "official government resources" such as official House work products and photos.
FACT's complaint features screenshots of multiple X posts by Frost's official Congressional account as evidence, such as photos of him attending events and posting or reposting inquiries, such as for his End Junk Fees for Renters Act and PACT Act claims. Moreover, campaign accounts cannot interact with a member's official social media (this explains why many have at least two X accounts, one for official business and one for personal posts, although Frost follows this custom himself).
As a result, these posts violate rules prohibiting members of Congress from making or sharing petitions, advertisements, or grassroots lobbying.
Kendra Arnold, FACT's executive director, told the Daily Wire that Frost's social media activity "clearly abused official resources and is troubling," demanding he at minimum apologize and delete the offending posts.
"Rep. Frost’s social media use has quite clearly abused official resources and is troubling. The law plainly requires a 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," said Arnold.
