How Whitworth managed to do his best for Trump the care

The Acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker, in addition to being the man that President Trump chose to end the investigation into the 2016 scandal in Russia, is a man of some kind. ;business. We have already heard about his involvement in a fraudulent patent marketing business that was shut down by the federal government after cheating $ 26 million worth of clients.

And new information about Whitaker's recent job highlights an interesting corner of the political world: a guy like Whitaker can earn huge sums of money for doing very little – and in doing so, an audition to become the leader of the nation law enforcement officer. You could even call it swampy.

You can also call it "wing welfare," a deprecating term that refers to a system in which the Conservatives are given well-paid compensation from which they can defend conservative ideas in the media without have to work. Is there some jealousy in that term, used by the Liberals who might wish that more of their donors pour money as freely as Conservative donors do? Absolutely.

But Whitaker was employed by a particularly odd organization of Potemkin, created to give an appearance of legitimacy while having little real existence apart from a televised newscast under the name of Whitaker. And oh boy was it lucrative, as The Post reports:

Three years after arriving in Washington in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker received over $ 1.2 million as an officer of a charity who said he did not have any other employees, among them best payers of his career.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust is described as a new non-profit supervisory body dedicated to denouncing the unethical behavior of public officials. For Whitaker, it has become a lucrative step in the rapid shift from modest legal practice in Iowa to the country's highest law enforcement profession. As president of FACT, he has appeared regularly on radio and television, often to scramble the Liberals.

But the origins of the FACT and the source of funding used to pay Whitaker – now Acting Attorney General – remain obscured. A review of national and federal archives and interviews with those involved show that the group is part of a national network of non-profit organizations that often work together to amplify conservative messages.

FACT, which was created under a different name a few years before taking Whitaker, is an organization so mysterious that some of the people listed on its official documents hardly seem to know it. One person listed as a director stated that she had forgotten her involvement, but she concluded in her review that "the organization only existed on paper and did nothing at all." Another person on the list list as director "said that she was surprised to know his role", explaining that the founder of the group had approached him but he had never agreed to get involved.

Since FACT is a 501 (c) 3 charity, it is not necessary to reveal its donors. But all this raises an attractive question: who would pay all this money to someone like Whitaker?

Remember that Whitaker was not particularly known until he was appointed chief of staff to Jeff Sessions. He had been a lawyer in the United States and led a weak Senate campaign in 2014, ranking fourth with 7.5% of the votes in the Republican primaries. It's not as if he had some kind of follow-up that would encourage donors to rush to open their wallets.

This does not mean, however, that he who gave all this money had received nothing. Whittaker's work seems to have consisted mainly of going on television to amplify conservative messages, on issues such as whether Hillary Clinton was one of the greatest criminals in history and should be prosecuted immediate.

Such work exists because cable news has an absolutely insatiable demand for people to go on the show and talk about the controversy or false controversy that is getting Washington's attention at some point. If you're crazy enough to spend a whole day watching it, you'll see a steady stream of talking heads that spend five minutes on one topic or another, dozens and dozens more. Given that networks need to find as many people to do it every day, true expertise is much less useful than the ability to speak with empathy and authority.

Whitaker had the kind of price of the book prize, because of his status as a former US lawyer and his position as president of a large organization that sounds good. Viewers would never know that in reality it was little more than a simple despatch.

Let's be clear: nothing is illegal about it, nor even really unethical. I do not doubt that when Whitaker went on television all the time to attack Hillary Clinton or other Democrats, he was expressing his true convictions. But a person who has found a home in this part of the political world, where organizations are hiding behind their status of "charitable groups" while devoting themselves to clearly partisan relationships, may not be the best choice to become the main responsible for enforcing the law in the United States.

But it was a perfect audition for Whitaker, not just because President Trump could see him on television criticizing the investigation of Special Advisor Robert S. Mueller III. Trump would also have seen someone defend the Republican interests while claiming his attachment to abstract principles such as integrity within the government. Since he was looking for someone who would favor the interests of the president while asserting that he was only concerned about the proper administration of justice, Whitaker could demonstrate that he was the only one who was in charge. skilled person.