Ethics official: Whitaker should recuse himself
WASHINGTON » A senior Justice Department ethics official concluded acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker should recuse himself from overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe examining President Donald Trump, but advisers to Whitaker recommended the opposite and he has no plans to step aside, according to people familiar with the matter.
The latest account of what happened underscores the high stakes and deep distrust — within Congress and in some corners of the Justice Department — surrounding Whitaker’s appointment to become the nation’s top law enforcement official until the Senate votes on the nomination of William Barr to take the job. Earlier in the day, a different official, who spoke on the condition they not be named, said ethics officials had advised Whitaker need not step aside, only to retract that account hours later.
Within days of the president’s announcement in early November that he had put Whitaker in the role on a temporary ba- sis, Whitaker tapped a veteran U. S. attorney to become part of a four-person team of advisers on his new job, including the question of whether he should recuse from Mueller’s investigation because of his past statements regarding that probe, and his friendship with one of its witnesses, according to a senior Justice Department official.
Whitaker never asked Justice Department ethics officials for a recommendation, nor did he receive a formal recommendation, this official said.
However, after Whitaker met repeatedly with ethics officials to discuss the facts and the issues under consideration, a senior ethics official told the group of advisers on Tuesday that it was a “close call,” but Whitaker should recuse to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, the official said. Whitaker was not present at that meeting, they said.
Those four advisers, however, disagreed with the ethics determination and recommended to Whitaker the next day not to recuse, saying there was no precedent for doing so, and doing so now could create a bad precedent for future attorneys general.