The four New York City housing tenants who were featured in prerecorded interviews during Thursday’s republican National Convention did not know their statements would be used in support of President Trump’s reelection, the New York Times reports.
Lynne Patton, the Trump Administration staff whom then-Congressman Mark Meadows displayed during a Congressional hearing as evidence that Trump wasn’t a racist, set up interviews with the guise that she was investigating conditions in New York Housing Authority properties.
“I am not a Trump supporter,” Claudia Perez, one of the interviewees, told the Times. “I am not a supporter of his racist policies on immigration. I am a first-generation Honduran. It was my people he was sending back.”
Four hours of interviews by Patton were edited down to a two-minute segment in which the interviewees were portrayed to complain about the mayor of New York City and Democratic policies.
Patton, head of the New York office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, reportedly used her position to access to the meeting of housing tenant representatives and introduce herself to the people.
The people interviewed were not informed beforehand that the video was for the Trump campaign and were apparently let to believe that the interviews were being conducted for HUD; only after they were interviewed were they informed that the videos would be used by the republican Party. It marks another episode where Trump and his campaign likely violated the Hatch Act to use their official positions for political purposes.