The acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, is attracting scandals like rotting meat attracts flies. Steve Benen provides a helpful summary:
The sheer volume of controversies surrounding acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker – who was only appointed to the job three weeks ago – is extraordinary. New reports, each of which are deeply embarrassing to the nation’s top law enforcement official, seem to pop up with alarming frequency.
Just over the last week or so, Whitaker has faced credible allegations of having violated the Hatch Act and having run a dubious child-care facility in Iowa. Today, the news went from bad to worse.
The Washington Post, pointing to Federal Trade Commission documents released in response to a public records request, reports that Whitaker not only helped lead a scam operation called World Patent Marketing, but he was well aware of complaints from defrauded customers.
Despite the complaints, Whitaker “remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years – even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show.”
A Bloomberg News report twisted the knife.
And I’ll just stop there. There’s so much more, but it makes me nauseous.
Matthew Whitaker, tough guy and wannabe AG.
So after I stopped laughing at this zero-peg on the morality scale, and the lying liar who keeps on stocking the swamp with the largest alligators ever seen in the Federal government – much bigger than Obama’s alligators, one might envision Trump saying – I’ve begun to wonder about misdirection.
Whitaker’s ludicrous. Whitaker’s a joke. I’m not a lawyer, and even I can tell he’s a joke. Even if I take into account Trump’s predilection for selecting candidates to fill roles based on physical appearance, and willingly grant that Whitaker looks like an AG, his record still makes him a joke.
So while the reporters and the pundits and the basset hounds those of us venting pressure run around penning pieces on this pathetic joke, I have to wonder what the hell Trump thinks he’s up to behind the smoke and mirrors. This entire AG thing makes so little sense that it’s as if Trump were suffering from dementia.
All I can think is maybe, just maybe, his preferred nominee is being kept in the wings until the new Senate convenes, where he’ll have a more substantial majority, and can nominate someone who won’t be blocked by any two GOP Senators by the name of Flake (retired), Corker (retired and utterly irrelevant even when he wasn’t), Murkowski (erratic), or Collins (easily fooled anyways). With a 53-47 majority, Trump can lose three Senators and still have his selection confirmed, since Vice President Pence will always do his bidding.
Will it be Whitaker? Or will he pick some other tough guy, like Clint Eastwood, instead?
Our new Attorney General Eastwood attends every hearing in Congress with a six-shooter on his hip, by command of President Trump. He’s also not permitted to wash his hair.
Or is there something deeper going on? Or is it just that he can’t unglue himself from the TV to pursue this very serious matter any further?
