The same day the Office of Personnel Management informed hundreds of employees, including about 20 involved in the communications division, that they were being laid off, the department’s top spokeswoman posted an Instagram video she filmed in her office showing off her outfit with the caption: “a moment for mixed patterns.”
On the day O.P.M. sent a memo to all federal department and agency heads asking for lists of underperforming employees to terminate, she flaunted a “work look” that included a purple skirt that her followers could also purchase, retailing at $475. She would get a commission if they used her link.
The spokeswoman, McLaurine Pinover, is not the only member of the Trump administration to have used her federal office to promote outside business interests, but former agency officials and ethics watchdogs say that the timing and content of the videos were both unlawful and especially tone-deaf.
Government watchdogs say the videos, coming from the spokeswoman of the agency driving the layoffs of thousands of federal workers, exemplify a widespread disregard for government ethics across the Trump administration.
“It’s illegal for a public employee to promote a private company in their government office,” said Donald Sherman, the executive director and chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group.
“On its own, maybe it would qualify as small potatoes, but context matters,” Mr. Sherman added. “In the context of a president and an administration that are routinely engaged in profiteering and using the office of the presidency for financial gain, in the context of someone who owns a private company, Elon Musk, coming into the administration and dismantling the government as he has, and in the context of O.P.M. being central to the administration’s attack on civil servants who actually want to be there to work for the American public, an O.P.M. political appointee engaging in this conduct is egregious.”
Though presidents are legally exempt from certain conflict of interest laws, President Trump has not divested from many business interests, some of which involve real estate deals with foreign governments that could influence his diplomatic decisions. Mr. Musk, the tech billionaire whom Mr. Trump deputized to slash the federal government, continues to pursue federal contracts for his private businesses.
And on Tuesday, the day news of Ms. Pinover’s Instagram account broke, Mr. Trump made a show of purchasing a red Model S from Tesla, of which Mr. Musk is chief executive, on the White House grounds, just a day after the company’s stock crashed.
Ms. Pinover’s short videos, each four to nine seconds, featured her in her office, lightheartedly modeling her clothes, applying makeup, working at her desk and occasionally blowing a kiss to the camera. They also included links to the clothes that would give her a commission from fans’ purchases.
The existence of Ms. Pinover’s accounts was first reported by CNN. The Instagram account has since been deleted, while the account that would supply commissions, ShopMy, has been wiped clean, save for Ms. Pinover’s name and picture and an invitation to “Shop my looks!”
In a statement, Ms. Pinover said she never made any money from the fashion videos.
“While I was battling breast cancer as a new mom, I felt so unlike myself. I turned to social media shortly after as a personal outlet,” she wrote. “I never made any income and with only about 800 followers, I’m surprised the so-called ‘newspaper of record’ finds this newsworthy. My focus remains on serving the American people at O.P.M.”
Whether she actually profited off the enterprise is irrelevant, Mr. Sherman said. The purpose of the account was to promote the clothing.
Ms. Pinover took on her role in the Trump administration in January, but her Instagram account — and the start of her fashion influencer videos — predated that job. Before she joined the Trump administration, she worked as a senior director for the Herald Group, a communications and advocacy firm, starting in August 2023. Before that, Ms. Pinover was a spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Former O.P.M. employees said that Ms. Pinover should have been warned against pursuing supplementary income streams, particularly on government property, as part of a standard ethics briefing employees receive when joining the agency.
It was not immediately clear if Ms. Pinover had been explicitly warned against such activity when she started the job. White House representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Use of public property to film one’s ‘fashion influencer’ videos should raise lots of ethical questions about how seriously the Trump administration is taking their oaths,” said Viet Tran, the deputy communications director of O.P.M. during the Biden administration, a political appointment. “Whether it’s Trump hawking Teslas on the South Lawn, SpaceX employees meddling in competitor contracts at F.A.A., or using your government offices for personal enrichment, it looks awful all around.”
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