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From Adam Schiff: "Matthew Whitaker, we’re watching you"

Spoiler

Adam B. Schiff, a Democrat, represents California’s 28th District in the House, where he is the ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee.

Only hours after the magnitude of Democratic gains in the House became apparent, President Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, putting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation in imminent danger. This represents the president’s most direct challenge yet to the rule of law.

Instead of elevating Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the most senior Senate-confirmed officer at the Justice Department, Trump circumvented normal succession by handpicking Matthew G. Whitaker, Sessions’s chief of staff and a person who has publicly criticized the special counsel’s investigation and has troubling conflicts of interest.

The president and Whitaker should heed this warning: The new Democratic majority will protect the special counsel and the integrity of the Justice Department. Should Whitaker fail to recuse himself — all indications are that he plans not to — and seek to obstruct the investigation, serve as a back channel to the president or his legal team or interfere in the investigations in any way, he will be called to answer. His actions will be exposed.

It is no mystery why the president chose Whitaker, an obscure and ill-qualified official never confirmed by the Senate, which many legal experts believe makes the appointment itself unconstitutional. Trump chose him to protect himself, his family and his close associates from the special counsel’s investigation and other investigations within the Justice Department.

Though I had many profound disagreements with Sessions, he was correct to follow the rules meant to ensure public confidence in the fair administration of justice and recuse himself, even though the president viewed Sessions’s compliance as a singular act of disloyalty. We must demand the highest ethical standards of everyone at the Justice Department, including the attorney general.

There is no indication that Whitaker has likewise consulted with ethics officials, as his past public statements, associations and the manner of his appointment make clear that he should have no role in overseeing the special counsel’s investigation or any matter related to the president and his campaign.

It’s highly likely that Trump elevated and appointed Whitaker in the first place because of his open hostility to the special counsel. Whitaker has not only been publicly critical of Mueller but also suggested starving his office of funds and suggested that the special counsel should be prohibited from investigating the president’s finances. If the Russians possess financial leverage over the president — and there are credible allegations they may have laundered money through the Trump businesses — it would be negligent to our national security not to find out.

Whitaker also has strong ties to the Trump campaign. In 2014, he chaired Sam Clovis’s campaign for Iowa state treasurer. Clovis went on to serve as national co-chair of Trump’s presidential campaign, and reportedly has testified before a grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation.

All this demands Whitaker’s immediate recusal. If he does not recuse himself, Whitaker could seek access to the special counsel’s plans and evidence, including grand jury testimony, and would be in a position not just to funnel information to Trump and his legal defense team but also to abuse his authority to cripple or end the investigation. Whitaker could attempt to prevent evidence from reaching Congress and the public or stop the special counsel from subpoenaing important testimony, including from Trump himself.

Since the special counsel was appointed, Democrats in Congress have called on Republicans to pass legislation to protect the investigation from interference. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved such a bill on a bipartisan basis. And yet we were repeatedly informed that such legislation was “ not necessary,” despite the president’s clear determination to protect himself at all costs and even as prosecutors obtained guilty pleas and convictions from the president’s campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, former national security adviser, foreign policy adviser and personal attorney. Even now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) professes no need to protect the Mueller investigation.

Congressional Democrats have written to the department’s top ethics official, outlining the obvious case for recusal and seeking information about any ethics guidance given to Whitaker on the matter. Separately, Democrats in the House and Senate have demanded that all relevant documents across the U.S. government related to that investigation, and Sessions’s termination, be preserved. Congress should likewise ensure that any Justice official overseeing the probe publicly pledge to protect the integrity of the special counsel. We will also revive legislation designed to protect Mueller from any interference or firing not based on good cause.

Trump, and those who would abet him in undermining the independence of the Justice Department, should understand this: The truth will come out.

After his firing by President Richard M. Nixon, former Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox said the question of “whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.” With this latest, unprecedented action, Trump has put Cox’s question once more squarely before the people’s representatives. We must answer it by acting as a coequal branch of government and defending the rule of law.

 

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From the author of the special counsel regulations: "The rules are clear: Whitaker can’t supervise Mueller’s investigation"

Spoiler

The installation of Matthew G. Whitaker as acting attorney general isn’t just unconstitutional — although it is unconstitutional. Even if Whitaker’s appointment ever survived a court challenge on constitutional grounds for most of his day-to-day duties at the Justice Department, the fact that he’ll now be performing the sensitive work of supervising Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation raises other deep problems. Putting Whitaker in charge of the inquiry is sharply at odds with the special counsel regulations governing Mueller’s work and with the Justice Department’s rules about who may oversee an investigation.

I had the privilege of drafting the special counsel rules 20 years ago, when I was at the Justice Department. Recall the setting: The independent counsel statute was expiring in June 1999, and there was a robust debate about what should take its place. After the multitude of investigations of the Clinton administration, many in Washington clamored for renewal of the supercharged independent prosecutor in the act. Others, seeing what they believed were abuses by then-independent counsel Ken Starr (and prior independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, who oversaw the earlier Iran-contra investigation of the Reagan administration more than a decade before Starr), believed that something more accountable and less independent had to be created instead.

My Justice Department colleagues and I, along with a bipartisan group on Capitol Hill, worked through many possible scenarios before we settled on the rules that now govern Mueller’s investigation. Everyone in the debate recognized that any enhancement in the special counsel’s accountability had to come from additional supervision by the attorney general. After all, the power to supervise is the power to destroy. The attorney general can stop a special counsel from investigating altogether or stop them from taking a specific step (such as subpoenaing a president). He can read every file of the counsel, and he may even attempt to give information about the investigation to the president in real time. And he plays a crucial role in determining what report by Mueller, if any, is given to Congress and ultimately the public.

But no one — and I mean no one — ever thought the regulations we wrote would permit the president to install some staff member of his choice from the Justice Department to serve as acting attorney general and thereby oversee the special counsel. Such a proposal would have been laughed off Capitol Hill within a nanosecond as fundamentally at odds with the most cardinal principle that no one is above the law.

It simply cannot be that the president can name his own temporary attorney general to supervise an investigation in which he and his family have a direct, concrete interest. The Constitution itself underscores this — even assuming Trump’s defenders are right that under the Appointments Clause, an acting attorney general doesn’t always need to be Senate-confirmed. Ordinarily, “Principal Officers,” which Cabinet secretaries undoubtedly are, must have Senate confirmation under Article II of our Constitution. The most eloquent defenders of Trump’s action say that Whitaker is serving in a temporary capacity, as an inferior officer, and therefore he can serve without confirmation. But they cite precedents that do not apply, because they concern emergency situations in which no one else has been confirmed by the Senate in the line of succession. In this case, the Senate has confirmed two officials who could continue to oversee Mueller: Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who has been supervising the case ever since former attorney general Jeff Sessions recused himself, and Solicitor General Noel Francisco. Notably, Congress’s succession statute for the Justice Department lists those people as next in line, not a handpicked mere staff member from the bowels of the department.

But even if the defenders’ claims were true, all that would mean is that Whitaker is an inferior officer who doesn’t need to be confirmed by the Senate. In that situation, someone else, a principal officer, would still need to be in place to supervise Mueller — who is also an inferior officer. That responsibility would fall once again to Rosenstein under the succession statute Congress authorized.

Sometimes, an inferior officer has to supervise other inferior officers with no principal — say, if no one else has been confirmed at the start of an administration. Or in a more hypothetical scenario, imagine a military conflict in which casualties meant there were no Senate-confirmed officials in a department. But fortunately, today’s Justice Department isn’t dealing with challenges anything like those. There are Senate-confirmed officials at the helm.

And regardless of those issues, there is yet another problem, specific to the Mueller investigation. In an emergency situation where an acting head is named, the president is, ultimately, the responsible official who supervises temporary, unconfirmed stand-ins. The idea is that there would at least be someone accountable to the public above the acting officer in those situations — and as Harry Truman put it, the buck always stops with the president.

Here, though, the idea that the president could be trusted to supervise Whitaker as he oversees Mueller’s work is absurd. The potential for self-dealing, not selfless sacrifice, is rampant. Trump could secretly order Whitaker to do his bidding and terminate an investigation of his or his family’s wrongdoing, and Whitaker would take the blame for it. Trump could shield his actions from public scrutiny, and Whitaker, who depends entirely on the president’s support for his job and later advancement, would have no standing to complain. This is fundamentally at odds with the core principle of American law, going back to the early 1600s, that no one can be a judge in their own case.

The problems don’t end there. Because even if you think that Trump could surmount that obstacle and supervise an investigation of himself, it cannot be that he can install the compromised Whitaker to the task. Justice Department ethics rules forbid someone from participating in a criminal investigation if they have “a personal or political relationship” with “any person … which he knows has a specific and substantial interest that would be directly affected by the outcome of the investigation.” That fits this case to a T. Whitaker indeed campaigned for the job, first on TV, and then reportedly with the White House privately, casting aspersions on the Mueller investigation, even saying “the truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign,” writing an op-ed called “Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going too far” and insinuating that he was part of Trump’s team. He evidently even interviewed for a job to defend Trump against Mueller. And Whitaker ran a past political campaign by Sam Clovis, a Trump confidant who has been subpoenaed by the grand jury as part of the Russia inquiry.

Given all of that, it is no wonder that Trump has told people that Whitaker would be “loyal.”

In some cases, Justice Department leaders can supervise investigations despite having personal knowledge about the entities involved. After all, the president nominates every senior official there, so relationships will often exist. But there is a big difference between those garden-variety cases and this one. The department’s ethics rules define a “personal relationship” as “a close and substantial connection of the type normally viewed as likely to induce partiality.” And it’s here where the temporary nature of Whitaker’s appointment boomerangs. Like Supreme Court decisions that are tickets “good for one day only,” when an appointment is made for only one reason, it looks more suspect. That suspicion is exacerbated further because Whitaker has not been confirmed by the Senate. No independent body has signed off on his ethics or his integrity — and bypassing the Senate makes his appointment appear to be an attempt to put a Trump lackey in charge of the investigation. And finally, the ethics rules ask whether a substitute official can be found easily. In this situation, two can step in. One, in fact, is already acting as attorney general for the purposes of Mueller’s investigation — yet another reason it looks as though Whitaker has been installed simply to change the way the special counsel’s work is handled.

Our founders recognized that “men were not angels” and that checks and balances in government were critical to avoid threats to the rule of law. The Whitaker installation does violence to our most basic principles — enshrined in the Constitution, laws enacted by Congress, the ethics rules that govern our prosecutors and the special counsel regulations themselves.

It is lawless and unprincipled.

It must be stopped.

 

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More info on Whitaker: "Conservative nonprofit with obscure roots and undisclosed funders paid Matthew Whitaker $1.2 million"

Spoiler

In the three years after he arrived in Washington in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker received more than $1.2 million as the leader of a charity that reported having no other employees, some of the best pay of his career.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust described itself as a new watchdog nonprofit dedicated to exposing unethical conduct by public officials. For Whitaker, it became a lucrative steppingstone in a swift rise from a modest law practice in Iowa to the nation’s top law enforcement job. As FACT’s president, he regularly appeared on radio and television, often to skewer liberals.

But FACT’s origins and the source of funding used to pay Whitaker — now the acting attorney general — remain obscured. An examination of state and federal records, and interviews with those involved, show that the group is part of a national network of nonprofits that often work in concert to amplify conservative messages.

Contrary to its claims in news releases and a tax filing, the group was created under a different name two years before Whitaker’s arrival, according to incorporation and IRS records. At least two of the organizers were involved in another conservative charity using the same address.

In its application to the IRS for status as a tax-exempt organization, the organizers reported that the group would study the impact of environmental regulations on businesses, records show. In that incarnation, the group took no action and “only existed on paper,” one man named in IRS filings as a board member told The Washington Post. Another named in a state filing as a board member said he never agreed to be on the board.

Whitaker’s 2017 pay from the charity — more than $500,000 for the first nine months, or half the charity’s receipts for the year, according to tax filings — and the group’s earlier, dormant incarnation have not been previously reported by media. 

Whitaker did not respond to requests for interviews. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to answer detailed questions about his involvement in FACT, referring a reporter to the charity.

A FACT spokesman who provided a statement on the condition that his name not be used declined to disclose the source of its funding.

“Like nearly all non-profit organizations — including those with similarly stated missions — FACT does not and is not required to release its donor information,” the statement said. “This protects free speech rights of all of these groups’ supporters as outlined in the First Amendment.”

The statement said that FACT “properly notified the IRS of its name change.”

“It is not unusual for a corporation, not for profit or profit, to refine its name and purpose, and since its inception FACT’s purpose has always been consistent with non-profit law and all appropriate notifications were made,” the statement said.

The spokesman did not respond to questions about whether the group told the IRS about its change in mission, as is required by IRS rules.

When the nonprofit was launched in 2012, Whitaker was a former U.S. attorney with a modest legal practice in Iowa that paid him $79,000 that year, according to a later disclosure he filed for a failed Senate bid. He also had several local side businesses, including a day-care center and a trailer manufacturer. 

A Virginia resident named Raymond Wotring and two others filed papers to create the Free Market American Educational Foundation, state and federal records show. Its stated mission was to “conduct research and provide informational studies on free market concepts in relation to government regulations and policy.”

Wotring and one of the other founding members had also served on another conservative nonprofit, Americans for Limited Government, which shared the same mailing address, records show.   

Wotring did not respond to multiple phone calls or to a note left at his home.

James Crumley, who provides marketing services to conservative nonprofits and campaigns, was listed in an IRS filing as one of the directors. In a phone call, he initially said he did not remember anything about the group, including why it was formed.

“I can only speculate since I didn’t even remember this group existed,” he wrote in an email later.

Crumley said he’d learned that the group held no meetings and apparently had no bank account in its first two years. “The organization only existed on paper and didn’t do anything at all,” he wrote. 

Noah Wall, now a vice president of advocacy for a conservative nonprofit called FreedomWorks, was listed in Virginia state filings as a director of the group in 2014. Wall said he was surprised to learn of his role. He said he was approached by Wotring but never agreed to join.

“I never signed anything,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure what any of this is.” 

On July 21, 2014, the IRS approved the group’s application for tax-exempt charity status, which was also signed by Wotring, the group’s secretary. In its application, the group said it would be nonpartisan and aim “to develop unbiased research on how government regulations on environmental policy can impact business.” The group by then had changed its address to a UPS Store in Fairfax, which was also used by Americans for Limited Government.

But just six weeks later, the newly approved charity changed its name, according to corporate records in Virginia. It was briefly called Working for Rights to Express & Communication.

The name was changed again in October of that year, to the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, according to records in Virginia. That same month, Whitaker, who had lost a primary bid for a U.S. Senate seat, became the group’s leader, according to Kupec, the Justice spokeswoman.

The charity’s mailing address was moved from Virginia to an office suite at a prestigious spot on K Street in the nation’s capital — a virtual office and mailing address shared by 200 organizations.

Kupec did not respond to questions about how Whitaker connected with the nonprofit.

Marcus Owens, a lawyer and nonprofit specialist who oversaw the IRS’s exempt-organizations division for a decade, said that in its first years the nonprofit appears to have been a “shell charity” that “was not utilized and remained on the shelf” until Whitaker’s arrival.

Taking over an existing charity makes it easier for groups to quickly stand up the operation and accept tax-deductible donations, he said. But charities that change their names and missions are required to alert the IRS, he said, to ensure they are still operating within guidelines for charities.

“It’s very possible that this organization is misusing its status as a charity,” said David Nelson, a specialist on nonprofit organizations and a former tax partner at the Ernst & Young accounting firm, who reviewed the group’s tax filings at The Post’s request. “It appears the IRS never gave approval to FACT.”

In its federal tax filing for 2014, FACT declared that it had not changed its name or its mission that year, records show, and there was no mention of the prior names. The spokesman for FACT declined to provide documents that he said showed it had notified the IRS of the name change. 

In the 2014 filing, FACT reported that it had no employees and that it paid Whitaker $63,000 for three months of work, 30 hours a week, as president and director. It received $600,000 in donations, the document shows.

The Post determined from other tax filings that the money came from DonorsTrust, a large nonprofit organization that wealthy contributors have used to anonymously give millions to conservative nonprofits in recent years.

The president of DonorsTrust, Lawson Bader, declined to identify the source of the funding contributed to FACT through his organization.

FACT launched its advocacy efforts shortly after Whitaker took over, describing itself in a news release as a “new watchdog group.”

On its website and in tax filings in 2014, FACT said that its mission was “to educate the public about unethical conduct on the part of public officials by publicizing these actions through media outlets throughout the country” and through its own website.

The new three-member board now comprised Whitaker, Whitaker’s former law partner and a conservative activist, Neil Corkery, who is involved in operating or funding multiple conservative charities.

Whitaker’s former partner, William Gustoff, did not return calls for comment. Corkery did not respond to phone messages seeking comment. 

The IRS prohibits charities from directly or indirectly participating in political campaigns, for or against candidates. The prohibition is rarely enforced.

The FACT spokesman said the group is nonpartisan and focuses on Democrats and Republicans alike. 

A Post analysis of more than 200 television and radio appearances by Whitaker from 2014 to September 2017, when he was named chief of staff to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, shows that Whitaker was overwhelmingly focused on Democrats.

Whitaker or the often-conservative television hosts interviewing him uttered the name of one of the five Republican lawmakers that the group has targeted in elections complaints a combined 37 times, compared with more than 750 mentions of Hillary Clinton.

Most of those Clinton references — more than 600 — came in the run-up to the 2016 election, and nearly all were comments critical of Clinton’s tenure, including her email scandal or possible ethical conflicts surrounding the Clinton Foundation.

After the election, Whitaker’s focus in those interviews turned to another target, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Whitaker or hosts named Mueller 185 times.

Tax filings show that one of FACT’s biggest contractors was America Rising, a research and communications firm in Arlington, Va., “whose mission is to help its clients defeat Democrats,” according to its website. FACT paid America Rising at least $500,000 for research from 2015 to 2017, tax filings show.

FACT paid another half-million dollars to CRC Public Relations in Alexandria, Va. The FACT representative who declined to be named in this report is a CRC executive.

In December 2014, FACT began posting news items and commentary on its new website, including the prediction that a super PAC formed to promote Clinton’s presidential aspirations might someday illegally coordinate with her future campaign. 

“These moves will likely draw [Federal Election Commission] complaints due to possible federal election law violations,” the post says.

Whitaker, the face of the organization, was often in Iowa in those early months, according to a review of interviews he conducted at the time. But being the president of a nonprofit conferred legitimacy on him, helping to raise his profile in Washington even as it allowed the group’s backers to claim tax deductions.  

He was increasingly appearing as a commentator on conservative media outlets — including Newsmax TV and Fox TV — and last year became a paid legal analyst on CNN.

In addition to targeting Clinton, Whitaker took aim at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) while filing election law complaints against Democrats and some Republicans. When asked by a radio host about the group’s pursuit of Democrats, Whitaker said, “It is a target-rich environment.”

In the three years he worked at the charity, Whitaker’s pay rose sharply each year, tax filings show. Last year, he was paid $55,000 a month. In all, he earned $1,219,000 — more than a third of the donations the group received from 2014 to 2017.

An IRS spokesman declined to comment, citing federal privacy law.

Well, he fits right in with the rest of this criminal administration.

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8 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

In that vein...

 

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Acting AG appointed to protect the presidunce from special counsel investigation gets his very own special counsel investigation.

US agency opens case file on potential Whitaker Hatch Act violations

Quote

An independent federal investigative agency is looking into whether acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker violated prohibitions on political activities by federal employees by accepting contributions to his 2014 Senate campaign earlier this year.

Last January and February, when Whitaker served as chief of staff at the Department of Justice, four individuals donated a total of $8,800 to the committee for Whitaker's unsuccessful 2014 run for a Senate seat in Iowa, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Austin Evers, the executive director of the watchdog organization American Oversight, told CNN his group submitted a complaint to the Office of Special Counsel that argued Whitaker may have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from accepting political contributions.

A spokesperson for the Office of Special Counsel confirmed receipt of the complaint and said a case file on the matter has been opened. The office can investigate Hatch Act complaints and recommend discipline but does not directly take disciplinary action. The office has no connection to the Justice Department special counsel's office that is overseeing Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

The Justice Department declined to comment to CNN. Whitaker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Office of Special Counsel guidance, "penalties for Hatch Act violations range from reprimand or suspension to removal and debarment from federal employment and may include a civil fine."

Evers told CNN that questions remain about the purpose and implications of the donations to Whitaker's campaign.

"After years of being completely dormant and only after he joined Jeff Sessions' office as chief of staff, Whitaker's campaign started receiving a cluster of contributions," Evers said. "It appears to violate the black-letter law of the Hatch Act."

William Gustoff, a former law partner of Whitaker's who served as treasurer for Whitaker's Senate campaign, told CNN that neither he nor Whitaker had solicited the donations made to the campaign earlier this year.

Gustoff said the campaign committee remained open because of remaining debt. FEC records show that Whitaker loaned his campaign $50,000 in 2013, and the committee still owes about $49,000.

When asked about the individuals who made the donations, Gustoff said, "They are all active Republicans who support other candidates in the state of Iowa."

"They didn't talk to me and I didn't talk to them about it," he added.

Leon Shearer, an Iowa attorney, declined to tell CNN why he had donated $1,000 to Whitaker's 2014 Senate campaign in January. "I don't think I have to disclose that," he said.

The three other contributors could not be reached for comment.

A financial disclosure form released Tuesday showed that Whitaker was paid a total of $904,000 over 2016 and most of 2017 by The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, which received nearly all of its funding from a group called DonorsTrust, whose contributors are mostly anonymous.

Government ethics watchdogs have also raised questions about Whitaker's earlier political activity.

Internet records reviewed by CNN on Wednesday show Whitaker registered four political website domain names in 2008, when he served as the US attorney in Iowa.

The domains "iowaconservative.us," "iowaconservative.org," "iowaconservative.mobi" and "iowaconservative.info" were registered in November 2008 under Whitaker's name and home address, about a year before he resigned from his position as US attorney.

While the domain names continue to list Whitaker as a registrant, it is unclear if they ever hosted any content.

Sarah Turberville, the director of The Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, said the domain registrations likely do not violate rules for federal employees engaging in political activity since there is no indication that Whitaker used them to support any campaigns, but she said they raised questions about his impartiality as a US attorney.

"There's a unique trust in the role of the United States attorney," she said. "When it comes to concerns about the perception of impartiality, this raises a lot of red flags."

 

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Moving right along, Whitaker is a Hail Mary pass; he is a sacrifice on the altar of Trump. Again, we are at peak outrageousness, the hallmark of this administration and the current GOP congress.  The corruption and shamelessness are blatant, right up in our faces.  When Congress reconvenes with a Dem majority in the house, there will be more outrageous actions and attempts at go-arounds. As I quoted a commentator discussing  a Republican end run in the House on a Dem action relative to the the War Powers Act a week or two ago, it was "unprecedented." 

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The FACT of the matter... makes you go 'hmm'.

(threadlet)

 

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Whoah. What does this signify, if anything?

 

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Will this change anything though? I'm afraid not. At least not before January, that is.

 

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Yahoo news is reporting that Trump has a nominee for Attorney General.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-announces-hell-nominate-william-barr-next-attorney-144803062--abc-news-topstories.html

The highlights are in the boxes.

Spoiler

President Donald Trump announced on the White House South Lawn Friday that he will nominate William Barr as his next attorney general.

Barr served as attorney general previously under President George H. W. Bush.

Spoiler

Barr has been somewhat critical of special counsel Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and has claimed there is more basis to investigate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her role in approving the 2010 acquisition of U.S. uranium stockpiles by a Russian energy company -- a complicated deal that has come to be known simply as Uranium One.

In my opinion, he's capitalizing on people's sentiment for the loss of George HW Bush when he is nominating Bush's Attorney General. He is nominating someone who has served before and who currently has more capital than anyone that just Trump could recommend. (Let's face it, we look at any of the people that Trump recommends for any office with a lot of skepticism because of his poor choices so far. Since Barr served before when we had a slightly better president than Trump,this will be perceived by the general public as someone with a little less baggage than someone Trump would drag out.)

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WaPo piece on William Barr: Red Flags

Spoiler

By Aaron Blake

December 7 at 9:45 AM

President Trump insisted when he made Matthew G. Whitaker his acting attorney general that he wasn’t familiar with Whitaker’s past commentary critical of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe.

But his new pick to be the attorney general has a record of making similar comments, and despite some favorable comments from Democrats, those could pose a problem in his coming confirmation fight.

President Trump confirmed Friday that former attorney general William P. Barr will be his nominee to head the Justice Department. Picking George H.W. Bush’s attorney general would seem a pretty safe and confirmable pick, on its surface.

But much like Whitaker’s, Barr’s past commentary has played down the severity of the allegations against Trump — on both the collusion and obstruction-of-justice fronts — and he also has suggested the Clintons should be in more trouble.

In fact, in November 2017, Barr told the New York Timesthat there was more basis to investigate Hillary Clinton for the Uranium One deal than there is to investigate Trump for potential collusion with Russia. He went so far as to say the Justice Department was wrong to give Clinton a pass.

"To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” he said.

Earlier that same month, Barr also explicitly called for more investigation of the Clintons, telling The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Matt Zapotosky, “I don’t think all this stuff about throwing [Clinton] in jail or jumping to the conclusion that she should be prosecuted is appropriate.” Then he added: “But I do think that there are things that should be investigated that haven’t been investigated.”

In both articles, Barr declined to judge Trump harshly for calling for specific investigations — even ones affecting him and his political opponents, apparently. Barr suggested that was okay for a president as long as the decision was made with respect to the actual evidence at hand and not for political reasons.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Barr confirmation hearing has started.

Pro:

He said the right things about letting Mueller finish and  he thought it should be public.

Con:

Iffy op eds about protecting Trump, basically. 

Walt Schaub said he posted his financial info only yesterday.

Apparently he cited the shutdown as an excuse not to meet with Klobuchar. 

IDK what to think:  he claims to be friends with Mueller. 

 

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