More on Acting AG Whitaker: He Comes to the Office as Top Lawman With Dirty Hands

So there’s more to talk about, as it pertains to Matthew Whitaker, President Trump’s dubious pick to step in as acting attorney general, after forcing Jeff Sessions to tender his resignation on Wednesday.

Whitaker, who formerly served as Sessions’ chief of staff, was no doubt because he is a Trump devotee, and also because of his negative views of the Russia probe.

Trump has been angling to have a Justice Department that serves as his personal buffer against the laws of the nation from the day he took office.

No doubt, he figured he’d need that kind of protection.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s the matter of Whitaker’s own dirty past, that would put him squarely in the camp of con artists and grifters that appeal to someone of Donald Trump’s despicable worldview.

According to reports recently released:

Matthew Whitaker was paid to sit on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing, which was ordered in May this year to pay a $26m settlement following legal action by federal authorities, which said it tricked aspiring inventors.

Court filings in the case against World Patent Marketing show that Whitaker received regular payments of $1,875 from the Florida-based company, and sent a threatening email to a victim of the alleged scam.

Whitaker publicly vouched for the company, claiming in a December 2014 statement that they “go beyond making statements about doing business ‘ethically’ and translate those words into action”.

Whitaker played the oily con well, claiming he would only align himself with a “first class” organization, but evidence (and his current associations) tell us otherwise.

The Federal Trade Commission sued World Patent Marketing and its founder, Scott Cooper in March 2017, claiming the company had cheated thousands of clients out of what amounted to millions of dollars.

The company was accused of tricking hopeful inventors into paying it thousands of dollars to obtain patents and licensing deals for their inventions. In fact, they “failed to fulfill almost every promise they make to consumers”, the complaint said.

And just to show he’s as corrupt and dirty as is required to be a true Trump’s Temple devotee, Whitaker bullied at least one former client in August 2015, by mentioning his former role as a federal prosecutor.

The former client had the audacity to take his complaint to the Better Business Bureau.

How dare he, right?

Whitaker went into strongarm mode.

“I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you,” Whitaker wrote in the email. “Understand that we take threats like this quite seriously.”

Say, Matt, emails are the kinds of things people can print out and use as evidence in court, should the need arise.

In the event of World Patent Marketing, it was needed, and those threatening emails were used in court.

In May, a judgment requiring World Patent Marketing to pay the government $25,987,192 was entered against the company by a federal court in southern Florida. Whitaker was not named among the defendants in the case.

Cooper later agreed to hand over $1m in assets and the proceeds of the sale of his $3.5m home in return for the rest of the judgment being suspended.

So Whitaker is coming into his role as the nation’s top cop with dirty hands.

But this is life in Trumplandia. At this point, it’s to be expected.