Still more Whitaker slime

It just keeps oozing out.

Matthew Whitaker, whom President Donald Trump named as his acting attorney general on Wednesday, privately provided advice to the president last year on how the White House might be able to pressure the Justice Department to investigate the president’s political adversaries, Vox has learned.

[...]

Sessions, Rosenstein, and other senior department officials believed that if they agreed to Trump’s wishes, doing so would constitute an improper politicization of the department that would set a dangerous precedent for Trump — or any future president — to exploit the powerful apparatus of the DOJ and FBI to investigate their political adversaries. Those efforts, in turn, coincided with the president’s campaign to undermine Mueller’s investigation into whether the president’s campaign aides, White House advisers, and members of his own family colluded with Russian to help Trump win the 2016 election.

During this period of time, Whitaker was the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and in that role was advising Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on how to counter the president’s demands. But according to one former and one current administration official, Whitaker was simultaneously counseling the White House on how the president and his aides might successfully pressure Sessions and Rosenstein to give in to Trump’s demands.

[...]

Whitaker, in his conversations with the president, presented himself as a vigorous supporter of Trump’s position and “committed to extract as much as he could from the Justice Department on the president’s behalf.”

  Vox

Precisely why Trump would want to replace Sessions with Whitaker.

One administration official with knowledge of the matter told me: “Whitaker let it be known [in the White House] that he was on a team, and that was the president’s team.”

Whitaker’s open sympathizing with Trump’s frequent complaints about the Mueller investigation resulted in an unusually close relationship between a president and a staffer of his level. The president met with Whitaker in the White House, often in the Oval Office, at least 10 times, a former senior administration official told me. On most of those occasions, Sessions was also present, but it’s unclear if that was always the case.

During this period, Whitaker frequently spoke by phone with both Trump and Chief of Staff John Kelly, this same official told me.

But, but...the president says he didn't know Whitaker.

On many of those phone calls, nobody else was on the phone except for the president and Whitaker, or only Kelly and Whitaker. As one senior law enforcement official told me, “Nobody else knew what was said on those calls except what Whitaker decided to tell others, and if he did, whether he was telling the truth. Who ever heard of a president barely speaking to his attorney general but on the phone constantly with a staff-level person?”

Well, it couldn't possibly be they were talking about the Mueller investigation. Trump said so.

Whitaker also counseled the president in private on how the White House might be able to pressure the Justice Department to name a special counsel to investigate not only allegations of FBI wrongdoing but also Hillary Clinton.

I fully expect that to be coming soon. According to this article, Trump had tried twice before to get the DOJ to investigate the FBI and Hillary Clinton, and they managed to skirt what they knew was a political move with no actual evidence that would justify investigations. Now, he's got Whitaker.

A long-time Justice Department trial attorney told me, “This is the first time, perhaps since Watergate, that the department has been asked to review old, closed files about a president’s political opponents. It’s not right that it should have been done at all.

[...]

Before he became Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker was one of the staunchest critics of Mueller’s investigation. In a July 2017 appearance on CNN, for example, Whitaker spoke of various ways the White House might sabotage Mueller’s probe. Whitaker suggested that if Sessions were to resign or be fired, his replacement might be able to curtail the investigation by simply refusing to fund it further.

“I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt,” Whitaker said.

The previous month, Whitaker, appearing on a conservative radio show, said he was sure that the president and his men did nothing wrong: “The truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign,” he declared.

[...]

The president’s relationship with Sessions and Rosenstein has famously been largely one of animosity and disdain. But in Whitaker, the president found a reliable and compliant friend. As the New York Times reported, “The president has long regarded Mr. Whitaker as his eyes and ears inside a department that he considers an enemy institution.” The Washington Post similarly reported, “As Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker met with the president in the Oval Office more than a dozen times, normally accompanying the attorney general. ... When Trump complained about the Mueller investigation, Whitaker often smiled knowingly and nodded in assent.”

The best people.

This whole Whitaker debacle reminds me of nothing more than the Bernard Kerik debacle.  (Perhaps its bolstered the physical look.)  Maybe Whitker will get lucky and not end up the same way.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11/19: Speak of the devil...



(Poor Papadop: two whole weeks!)