After a Donald Trump 2024 flag was seen flying on a New York post office flagpole on Memorial Day, an investigation has been launched, according to a local media report.
According to the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York, the Trump flag was hung under the U.S. flag and the POW/MIA flags at the Delmar post office “for a short time” before it was removed later on Monday morning.
Albany’s CBS 6 TV station reported that local police “say they have reached out to the Office of the Postal Inspector, pending investigation.”
Newsweek emailed the U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General and the Bethlehem Police Department on Monday night for additional details. This article will be updated with any provided statements.
The flag was reportedly spotted by attendees of the Memorial Day Parade in nearby Bethlehem, New York. Photos of the Trump flag flying at the post office were shared with the Times Union by an unnamed source.
The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, “limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs,” according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
The law’s purposes are to “ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation. ”
Mark Lawrence, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, told the Times Union, “The flag wasn’t placed there by postal service workers and the agency had it removed as soon it learned it was there.”
Lawrence also told the newspaper that he didn’t know if the Postal Service was trying to determine who placed the flag.
Meanwhile, approximately 150 miles south of the Delmar post office, Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan is coming to a close this week after over four weeks of testimony.
The former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee is facing 34 charges in connection to a payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels to allegedly keep quiet about an affair she said they had. Prosecutors claim that Trump falsified business records to conceal his involvement in the payment, which was made by Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, during the 2016 presidential election.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all counts involved and denies having an affair with Daniels.
Closing arguments in the case will begin Tuesday morning, and a 12-person jury will begin its deliberations on Wednesday.
