In an interview with Boyle, Gowdy calls for the elimination of the NLRB, an 80 year-old independent government agency tasked with investigating unfair labor practices and protecting the organizing rights of employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act. Gowdy would prefer the legislation be enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and suggests that the NLRB is a politically partisan agency by deceptively implying that the NLRB is not covered by the Hatch Act, a law preventing most federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. Boyle writes:

“The United States Department of Justice has criminal prosecutors and it also has a civil division,” Gowdy said. “It's the DOJ that gets involved in anti-trust issues, it's the DOJ who handles issues looking into behemoth telecommunications companies. Surely to goodness, they've got bright lawyers at DOJ. Surely to goodness, they can enforce the provisions of the NLRA.” [...]

"[Federal prosecutors'] allegiance is solely to the truth and they're not sycophants for labor unions," Gowdy said. “I have confidence in career prosecutors; I worked with them. They're necessarily and by law apolitical because of the Hatch Act and we trust them with the other major decisions that we have in our civil and criminal justice system.”

The NLRB has typically swung with political tides, being a bit more pro-business under Republican administrations and a bit more pro-union under Democratic administrations.

Had Boyle done a minimal amount of research for his article, he would have discovered that Gowdy's insinuation -- that NLRB attorneys don't fall under the Hatch Act -- is completely false. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel quickly confirmed to Media Matters that “the Hatch Act (5 U.S.C. §§ 7321-7326) governs the political activity of federal civilian executive branch employees, including NLRB employees.” In other words, if DOJ attorneys are “necessarily apolitical” because of the Hatch Act, then NLRB attorneys are no different.