anything about whitaker because, you know, he s one of his iowa ans. marcy wheeler and jed shugarman, thank you both. senator jeff merkley of oregon, should the senate be doing something about this situation in the lame duck session? well, they absolutely should. i mean, listen, this is an individual who is being investigated, his company his former company is being investigated for a predatory scam on which he was the enforcer. we ve heard how he abused his office in iowa. we ve now heard about campaign donations which would enable him to repay a loan to himself. at every aspect this man is unfit. and that is what hamilton was talking about. he said we need this confirmation process to avoid the appointment of cronies of unfit character. and yet that s what we have now right now, unfit character. is there any forcing mechanism, any leverage that
attorney general. and, in fact, chuck grassley, who remains the chair of the judiciary committee has really close ties with him from iowa. so he s not going to say anything about whitaker because, you know, he s one of his iowa ans. marcy wheeler and jed shugarman, thank you both. senator jeff merkley of oregon, should the senate be doing something about this situation in the lame duck session? well, they absolutely should. i mean, listen, this is an individual who is being investigated, his company his former company is being investigated for a predatory scam on which he was the enforcer. we ve heard how he abused his office in iowa. we ve now heard about campaign donations which would enable him to repay a loan to himself. at every aspect this man is unfit. and that is what hamilton was talking about. he said we need this
have been scrutinizing matt whisker whitaker s past. think matt whitaker is a hack? one of many. what do you make of this record? well, it strikes me that this is someone who clearly was chosen because of that record and not despite it. he was chosen because of his willingness to say on tv that the mueller investigation is a witch hunt and there s no it s implausible that trump didn t know about that when he chose him. so i think that raises the question that raises many legal questions. but the question it raises for me is that whether this is a constitutionally acceptable appointment. and i think that raises both the text of the constitution, but also a larger question of the constitution, what is it for the president to faithfully execute his office, or to make sure that the laws are faithfully executed?
and is now being criminally investigated by the fbi. of course, housed in the same justice department he now oversees. whitaker served on the board of world patent marketing where he was responsible for conducting cheesy pitches from new hot tub designs and apparently scaring off would be whistle blowers who were hip to what the company was doing. the federal trade commission uncovered e-mails in which whitaker personally threatened and tried to silence customers who said they were defrauded. and a profanity laced phone call he made to a website entitled appropriately enough ripoff report. the closer you look, the thinner he has resume gets. when president george w. bush appointed him as u.s. attorney general in iowa, he boasted about a personal injury case he handled and had never been a prosecutor. he got the appointment through political connections. his big egest high profile prosecution was of a democratic politician. when the justice department was being politically manipulated b
so it was a bogus case, but even after that whitaker was like, yeah, i still you know, i m okay with what i just did, which was a clear politicization of the prosecutorial process. good point. that was an acquittal of the most high profile case. marcy, there was an obviously obvious conflict, both the fbi investigation but the question of what exactly was funding this bizarre shell organization he was running. right. so this organization and the other thing that happened is he first started making $60,000 a year there. by the end he was making like $600,000. he gets hired and doing poe dunk stuff and starts going after hillary and gets a huge raise, he starts advising trump via cnn appearances, how to deep six the mueller inquiry and he gets another big raise. you re right, we have no idea who was paying him. it was laundered through a bunch