Acting AG Matt Whitaker’s $1.2 Million Earned from Conservative Non-Profit Raises Serious Questions
Since being mysteriously appointed Acting Attorney General there has been an understandable amount of scrutiny towards Matt Whitaker’s past and present business dealings and personal life. His appointment is “mysterious” because as Chris Geidner reports for BuzzFeedNews, the White House will not say when President Donald Trump appointed him as acting attorney general.
Turns out that Trump’s controversial pick reportedly made a king’s ransom in salary in the past year or so, earning more than $1.2 million heading a conservative nonprofit organization before joining the Justice Department as Chief of Staff for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Reporting for Politico, Josh Gerstein writes
As executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, or FACT, Whitaker made $502,000 in salary during the first nine months of 2017 before joining the Justice Department in September of that year as Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff, according to a financial disclosure form released Tuesday.
Whitaker took in $402,000 in salary from FACT in 2016, according to the group’s tax filings. The remainder of his compensation came from previous years with the group, where he started in 2014.
FACT portrayed itself as a conservative alternative to liberal-leaning watchdog groups like Common Cause and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Donations to FACT are tax-deductible because it was organized as a tax-exempt, educational organization.
Gerstein then points out that “such groups are not supposed to engage in electoral politics,” before pointing out how Whitaker often appeared on TV to criticize Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential campaign.
There has been bipartisan push-back over Whitaker’s appointment as Acting AG. Conservative criticism is illustrated by the following tweet from conservative take radio host Hugh Hewitt, who tweeted a link to a Washington Post investigation warning of a “second Special Counsel” probe:
Has anyone advised @realDonaldTrump that appointing of Mr. Whitaker as Acting AG —given his past employment by group whose funding is unknown— could easily trigger a second Special Counsel investigation under rules. Ask @neal_katyal. https://t.co/nw5OK4EKpv
— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) November 21, 2018
The opacity of Whitaker’s past income ostensibly puts him at the risk of reasonable criticism for biased decisions as acting head of the DOJ. Lest we forget that Whitaker’s personal business dealings include other strange episodes.
Writing for Washington Post, Dana Milbank called him a “crackpot” before listing the reasons why, which include: His apparent belief in Bigfoot, his assertion that time-travel will be a thing in the next ten years, and his involvement in a company hawking extra-large toilet bowls for well-endowed men.
Yes, this is the guy that is now overseeing the Department of Justice. Good times.
