Trump’s acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker is under FBI criminal investigation
We’ve all had fun these past few days watching new Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s embarrassingly fraudulent antics get exposed, from his “masculine toilet” to his phony time machines. And we’ve known from the start of this that Whitaker’s scam company has been shut down by the Federal Trade Commission. But now, as confirmed by Rachel Maddow on-air on MSNBC this evening, it turns out Whitaker and his company are under active FBI criminal investigation.
This may be a bit of a problem, considering that Donald Trump has illegally put Matthew Whitaker in charge of the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI. That’s right, Whitaker is now technically in charge of the criminal investigation into himself. So where does this go from here?
Numerous legal challenges to the legitimacy of Whitaker’s appointment are playing out in court as we speak; the court system could end up ruling that Whitaker isn’t the legitimate Acting Attorney General; current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is instead. But the House Democrats are also taking a different approach, which appears to be aimed at scaring Whitaker into submission during what is expected to be a brief tenure.
The incoming chairs of several House committees have formally announced that they’re launching an investigation into Matthew Whitaker’s scam company. They’ve already begun requesting documents, and that’ll translate into subpoenas the minute they officially take control in early January. The message to Whitaker is fairly clear: if you mess with Robert Mueller, we’ll expose your lifetime of crimes, and you’ll go to prison for them. We’ll see if Whitaker blinks.
