The Justice Department won’t say whether acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker’s ethics review is still incomplete, 14 months after he joined that department, as congressional Democrats have asserted.
Whitaker spokesperson Kerri Kupec declined to comment on the claim, which Democrats made in a letter Thursday reiterating a request that they be notified if ethics officials advise Whitaker to recuse himself from oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“It is our understanding that, 14 months after Mr. Whitaker joined the Department, his ethics review is still incomplete,” the letter said. “The Department has offered no public explanation for this extraordinary delay, nor have we received any reply to our letter.”
Calls for Whitaker’s recusal were raised due to his TV punditry criticizing Mueller before joining the Justice Department, as well as to his relationship with Sam Clovis, who’s testified in front of Mueller’s grand jury. Whitaker and Clovis have remained friends since running against each other in the 2014 Senate race in Iowa.
Whitaker served as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief-of-staff before being named Sessions’ replacement when Trump fired Sessions last month.
There have also been questions raised about the legality of Whitaker’s appointment, given that his previous DOJ role was not Senate confirmed, and due to his role on the board of a Miami-based company the Federal Trade Commission shut down. The FBI is investigating the company, World Patent Marketing, which the FTC called a “scam.”
Whitaker does not intend to recuse himself from the Mueller probe, the Washington Post reported, but the Justice Department issued a statement last month claiming that he would consult ethics officials about his “oversight responsibilities and matter that may warrant recusal.”
Read the congressional Democrats’ letter below:
Understandable. There’s a lot to review.
An ethics review that takes 14 months and counting is unethical. Or to put it in another way, if it takes 14 months, the answer is pretty clear.
"A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world." – Albert Camus
I wonder how many unethical finding they have to have before they are able to call it though.
The greatest threat to our sacred democracy (or at least the notion of it) is the republican party. I’m old enough to have watched Kennedy take office and Nixon fall. The GOP of those days is dead. It’s morphed into a lawless, shameless, anti-American cancer and it’s truly threatening to destroy the country. Drumpf, Whitaker, McConnell, Cornyn, Cruz, Nunes and the rest of the thugs have put aside all pretense of law and order and have simply decided to rule by fiat and ad hoc committees. If he can stop Drumpf, Mueller may go down in history as the savior of the republic.