Who Is The New Acting Attorney General?

Wednesday was a big day.

Everyone was still sifting through the remains of the midterm election, assessing the damages or reveling in victory.

It was a mixed bag, for me. On the federal level, there was very little I cared about, given that the two major parties in control now are pretty much both irresponsible and corrupt, just in different ways. Neither of them care for anything, beyond whatever it takes to grab control and keep it.

On the local level, my county’s honorable, godly sheriff was reelected, after a nasty battle with a “gentleman” who spent the entire campaign flinging dirt, and even had t-shirts crafted several days before the election, falsely connecting the sheriff to racist comments.

It was a low trick, and probably cost the guy a few crucial votes.

Also, North Carolina finally wised up and passed common sense voter ID laws – something we had, at one point, but the Obama administration actually stepped in and crushed.

Too bad we didn’t have them in place in 2016. We’d probably still have our amazing Governor Pat McCrory.

But back to the federal results…

What this midterm election did was sort of level the playing field, by putting the House in Democrat hands, and leaving the Senate in Republican hands.

I know someone is going to claim I wanted it to be a “blue wave.”

Actually, no. I could never get comfortable with a Democrat majority, across the board.

With a different president I could have been comfortable with a Republican majority. I was not, however, comfortable with the Republican majority we’ve had for the last couple of years, simply because they all acted as if the president has total rule. They forgot that there are three separate, but co-equal branches of government to this republic.

Now, I will learn to be comfortable with a divided Congress, because they will be forced to work together, and in the crossfire, there may be the opportunity to hold this destructive presidency in check.

Until that happens, however, we’ll probably be seeing more out of Trump like we saw on Wednesday, where he lashed out at incoming Democrats, warning them against crossing him, and mocking outgoing Republicans, who didn’t “embrace” him, as if he were one of those despotic rulers that he seems to admire so greatly.

We also saw him oust Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and rather than put the second in charge at the Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in charge, he named Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’ chief of staff, to step into the role, for the time being.

Whitaker is an Iowa attorney with very little about him that you would call remarkable. He’s not who most would look at to be appointed to the position of the nation’s top cop.

So why him?

Well, he’s now in a position of oversight of Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s activities during the 2016 election, as well as any potential connection to the Trump team.

OH – and he’s previously been very critical of the investigation and Mueller.

Whitaker has accused the special counsel’s investigation of going “too far,” while calling on Rosenstein to “limit the scope” of the investigation.

“The president is absolutely correct. Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing,” Whitaker wrote in an op-ed for CNN in August 2017.

Whitaker also previously wrote an op-ed in The Hill defending the president for firing former FBI Director James Comey, while blasting DOJ officials in the Obama administration for failing to examine scandals at the time when Barack Obama was president.

Was this a self-serving move on the part of President Trump?

You bet it was. He’s wanted this probe stopped from the beginning, and now he has someone in place who may be, shall we say, less inclined to adhere to ethical standards, and more inclined to try and please the president in his current role.

Really bizarre, when you consider that was the only instance where Jeff Sessions was not bending to Trump’s will. He stepped aside because of ethics and his own involvement in Trump’s campaign, and communications he had at the time with Russian officials. In ever other aspect, however, in regards to immigration, prison reform, etc… Sessions was loyal to Trump.

In fact, Sessions had a lot on his plate, and he was managing it all. Will Whitaker be able to juggle as much? Does he have the experience?

We’ll see, but make no mistake: Trump is only concerned with stopping Mueller, at this point.

And to be fair, Whitaker has also said that he couldn’t see any scenario where Robert Mueller would act inappropriately, or would do anything that would require he be terminated.

If that changes, now that Trump has let him take the top spot, remains to be seen, but Democrat lawmakers are already calling for Whitaker to recuse himself, based on his past comments about the probe.

They’re not out of line to do so.

Another issue with Whitaker is that he has defended Donald Trump Jr. and the meeting he had with Russians at Trump Tower.

“You would always take that meeting,” Whitaker said during an appearance on CNN in July 2017 that recently re-surfaced.

“If you have somebody that you trust that is saying that you need to meet with this individual because they have information about your opponent, you would take that meeting,” he added.

So if it’s no big deal, why lie about it?

People who feel they’ve done nothing wrong don’t hide details or lie, which is what Trump Jr. did for months, including denying that his father crafted the statement he was to give to the press about the meeting.

But there are other conflicts with Whitaker’s appointment.

Whitaker served as campaign chairman for Sam Clovis, who had served as co-chairman of Trump’s campaign team.

In 2014, Clovis ran for the position of Iowa state treasurer.

And after joining Trump’s team, it seems Clovis found himself entangled in the Russia net, as well.

The Washington Post reported earlier this year that Clovis was the campaign official who encouraged George Papadopoulos to set up an “off the record” meeting with Russian officials.

Clovis has already been interviewed by Mueller’s team.

Another thing to know about Whitaker is that he is a Trump loyalist, and he and the president apparently have a good relationship.

It was Whitaker that acted as the go-between, when the relationship between Trump and Sessions was at its worst. So now he’s being rewarded, but it would be foolish to not look at how Trump is operating.

Last year, a Beverly Hills tax attorney wrote an op-ed defending Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns. Trump appointed him to head the IRS.

Last year, an ex-US attorney went on cable news to defend Trump from the Mueller investigation. He’s now the acting attorney general.

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) November 8, 2018

That’s right, and for those who would point to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or anybody else and say, “But what about…” just stop. When you start excusing the bad behavior of your “team” by pointing at the other team, you’re showing the grade school level intellect that has put us in this mess, to begin with.