Charity paid acting A-G $900,000

WASHINGTON • In the roughly two years before he rejoined the Justice Department, acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker earned more than US$900,000 from a conservative charity with no other employees and collected more than US$1,800 in “legal fees” from a Miamibased invention-marketing company that was shut down amid accusations of fraud, according to a financial disclosure form made public Tuesday.

The form, which Whitaker first filled out after taking over as Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff, shows Whitaker drew a salary from the conservative Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust of US$904,000 and collected US$1,875 in legal fees from World Patent Marketing.

That company is notable because it shut down in May and agreed to pay a settlement of more than US$25 million to resolve a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into its practices.

Whitaker also reported a US$103,000 distribution from his own law firm and US$15,000 in consulting fees from CNN, the form shows.

The disclosure report covers 2016 through October 2017, when Whitaker started at the Justice Department.

Although Whitaker first signed it in November 2017, the report was revised several times after he took over as acting attorney general in the wake of Sessions’s ouster.

Over the past two decades, Whitaker owned a day-care centre, a concrete supply business and a trailer manufacturer; served as the U.S. attorney in Iowa; and before coming to the Justice Department to be Sessions’ chief of staff, did legal commentary and led the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), which described itself as a watchdog nonprofit dedicated to exposing unethical conduct by public officials.

Writing in The Washington Post, Paul Waldman said, “FACT, which was created under a different name some years before taking on Whitaker, is an organization so mysterious that some of the people listed on its official documents barely seem to know it exists. One person listed as a director said he had forgotten about his involvement, but upon looking into it, he concluded that ‘The organization only existed on paper and didn’t do anything at all.’ ”

Whitaker used his role as president and executive director of FACT in 2016 as a platform to question the ethics of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Democrats and others have separately raised questions about whether Whitaker can legally hold the position of acting attorney general because he has not been confirmed by the Senate, and whether he might seek to interfere with the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian election interference, of which he had been publicly critical.