“While in private business, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker walked away from a taxpayer-subsidized apartment-rehabilitation project in Iowa after years of cost overruns, delays and other problems,” the AP reports.
“The city of Des Moines ultimately yanked an affordable housing loan that Whitaker’s company had been awarded, and another lender began foreclosure proceedings after Whitaker defaulted on a separate loan for nearly $700,000.”
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has” told associates that the Justice Department under his leadership won’t cut the budget for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference,” Bloomberg reports.
“It’s a signal that some of the worst fears that critics have about Whitaker’s potential to interfere with Mueller’s probe won’t come true in the immediate aftermath of the former DOJ chief of staff being chosen to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”
CNN: “When things were particularly bad between President Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general’s chief of staff, Matt Whitaker, would attend White House meetings in his place.”
“But Sessions did not know that Whitaker at the same time was angling for a promotion. Whitaker, who was installed at the Justice Department by powerful White House allies, ‘spoke and behaved like he was attorney general.’”
Matthew Whitaker, the nation’s new acting attorney general, “repeatedly chided presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in public statements during 2016 while he was speaking for a group that is barred by its tax-exempt status from supporting or opposing political candidates during a campaign,” the AP reports.
“Before coming to the Justice Department in 2017, Whitaker was president and executive of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a charitable organization that styles itself as nonpartisan government watchdog promoting ethics and transparency. The tax-exempt group — known by its initials, FACT — is supposed to serve the public interest under Section 501c3 of the U.S. tax code, without directly or even indirectly supporting or opposing specific candidates for office.”
Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker “has no intention of recusing himself from overseeing the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people close to him who added they do not believe he would approve any subpoena of President Trump as part of that investigation,” the Washington Post reports.
“President Trump declined Thursday to deny that he was eyeing Matthew Whitaker as a replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And suddenly, Whitaker’s past skepticism of Russia investigation has taken on new significance,” the Washington Post reports.
“Appearing on CNN in July 2017 — before he was in his current position as Sessions’s chief of staff — Whitaker mused about a scenario in which Trump might fire Sessions and replace him with temporary attorney general. He noted that federal regulations still gave the attorney general power over the budget for a special counsel. That temporary replacement, he then said, could move to choke off Mueller’s funding.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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