No wonder Matt Whitaker ran away screaming
After William Barr was confirmed as the new permanent Attorney General, Donald Trump offered outgoing Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker a cushy new fake job at the Department of Justice, presumably to keep Whitaker from cutting a perjury plea deal against him. Whitaker took the job, but then abruptly resigned after just a couple weeks. We knew something didn’t smell right, and now it’s starting to surface.
Legal activist group American Oversight has obtained Department of Justice records which reveal that after Donald Trump ordered then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch a sham investigation into Hillary Clinton, Sessions did precisely that. In November of 2017, Sessions instructed U.S. Attorney John Huber to investigate Hillary. At the time, Matt Whitaker was the Chief of Staff for Sessions. These newly exposed records reveal that Whitaker was the one who sent Sessions’ instructions to Huber. Why is this such a big deal?
In the big picture, it means that Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions really did abuse their power by attempting to open what they knew was a baseless criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton for political reasons. This is impeachable, and perhaps prosecutable, and we’re going to hear a lot more about this story in the coming days. But when it comes to Matt Whitaker, he lied about this whole thing.
So now we have Matt Whitaker not only having committed perjury during his recent House Judiciary Committee testimony, but also having committed perjury in this Sessions/Clinton matter. Whitaker knew he was going down for at least one count of perjury when he abruptly resigned his brand new DOJ job. Did he know that this Freedom of Information Act request was about to nail him for another count? Now the question is whether Whitaker has resigned because he’s cut a plea deal, or simply because he’s panicking without a plan.
