Sean Spicer Cheers Jobs Numbers And Potentially Violates Rule

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer boasted on Twitter Friday about the first jobs report of President Trump's first full month in office just after the data were released.

In doing so, he might have violated a somewhat obscure rule.

According to a 1985 rule of the release of public information in the public register, "Employees of the Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release time."

The New York Times first noticed this potential violation.

Spicer's following tweet may have breached this directive, which he posted just a little more than 20 minutes after the data was made public:

On Twitter, Erica Groshen, a former federal commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, explained the rule's reasoning.

"The one hour rule is in a directive from [the Office of Management and Budget's] Office of Science and Statistical Policy," she wrote. "This best practice separates data from interpretation--and distinguishes between statistical agencies from policy makers."

Before he was president, Trump was very skeptical about the jobs numbers.

"Don’t believe these phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment," then-candidate Trump said over a year ago.

Now, with the bureau releasing similar numbers, and with no change in their methodology, Trump's spokesman is now racing to tout the data. On his own Twitter feed, the president retweeted the Drudge Report's post saying "GREAT AGAIN: +235,000."

Photo credit: Twitter Screenshot