Opinion: Washington Secrets
Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who served as a Trump's acting attorney general between Jeff Sessions and William Barr, claimed in a new book that Holder “created an above-the-law culture” in the department that led to the bumbled investigations that the president has dubbed “Obamagate.”
In Above the Law, provided in advance of its release, Whitaker described a department that was more political under Obama than any department since President Richard Nixon’s, one that sought to promote the efforts of partisans such as FBI chief James Comey, who has since been fired by Trump.
“What Holder is advocating for,” he wrote, “is a government full of Jim Comeys: government officials determining on their own what the Constitution demands, deciding which laws to prosecute and which to ignore, selectively releasing information to the media about Americans under investigation, and held accountable neither to the chief executive nor to voters.”
And as Obama’s “wingman” at the department, added Whitaker, Holder built a team that would remain after he left and that would eventually shut down a probe into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal at the State Department and eagerly build up an investigation into alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.
“There’s no doubt that Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election,” he wrote in the book from Regnery Publishing.
“But the political meddling within our own government, within the Justice Department, and within the intelligence community poses a far greater threat to Americans than any Russian internet troll farm. Without the rule of law, without respect for the Constitution, without honest administration in the Justice Department, we don’t have a republic,” he added.
The book is an indictment by a true insider of the “deep state” of liberal bureaucrats trying to protect their own and ignore Trump’s election.
It also highlighted the double standard of Obama-era officials, especially on recusals from cases they had an interest in. One that jumped out was of the case and conviction of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The book noted that the judge who accepted Flynn’s guilty plea of lying to the FBI was a friend and neighbor of discredited FBI official Peter Strzok, who texted with his FBI lover about hoping Trump did not become president. Strzok did not recuse himself, and Judge Rudolph Contreras did only later.
In several passages, Whitaker wrote about how Holder and his successors refused to investigate Obama-era scandals, such as the IRS's targeting of conservatives and a case against the New Black Panther Party, and he recalled how Holder successor Loretta Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton before ending the department’s probe of the Hillary Clinton emails.
“As longtime professional staff of the Justice Department privately acknowledged to me, the arrogance characteristic of the Obama administration, personified by his first attorney general, Eric Holder, created an above-the-law culture inside the Justice Department,” wrote Whitaker.
No comments:
Post a Comment