Tag: Whitaker

  • All that and a liar too

    The acting AG appears to have lied to agencies investigating him. Of course he does.

    New documents released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission suggest that acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker misled the agency’s investigators as he was stepping into his role last year as Justice Department chief of staff.

    After several attempts to reach Whitaker about the Miami company where he was on the advisory board, the FTC investigator emailed his colleagues to relay that he finally reached Whitaker, who was willing to cooperate and asserted that he “never emailed or wrote to consumers” in his consulting role.

    Oh yes? That’s not what we’ve read.

    That statement to James Evans of the FTC appears to be inaccurate. Whitaker had written a letter in 2015 to a disgruntled customer who planned to report the company, World Patent Marketing, to the Better Business Bureau. In the letter, which was included in the FTC’s disclosure and reported previously by the news media, Whitaker threatened the customer, writing: “I am assuming you understand there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your ‘group’ are doing.”

    The company, you may recall, is basically another “take your money and do nothing for it” scam, like Trump “University.” The customer was disgruntled because he had paid the company a lot of bucks and the company had done bupkis to earn it. Whitaker’s role was to use his lawyer cred to threaten customers who objected to this way of proceeding. That’s just the right kind of person to be Attorney General of a whole large country.

    The documents, produced Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, contain internal correspondence among FTC investigators, who expressed frustration at being unable to reach Whitaker at several points during 2017.

    At the time, the agency was investigating complaints about World Patent Marketing, which it described as an “invention promotion scheme” that it accused of “bilking millions of dollars from consumers.”

    The emails also convey FTC investigators’ shock in October 2017 when — in the latter stages of their investigation — Whitaker was suddenly named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

    “You’re not going to believe this,” Evans, who works for the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote on Oct. 24, 2017. “Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States.”

    It is hard to believe, but all of this is hard to believe.

  • When the AG speaks in the great hall, it’s always full

    Kind of heartwarming. Whitaker makes his debut.

    I might feel sorry for him, but after those stories about his glorious career threatening unhappy customers of a fraudulent “patent” company, I don’t and can’t and don’t think I should.

  • A first class organization

    More on the sterling credentials of Trump’s acting Attorney General, from the Wall Street Journal (which doesn’t lightly criticize capitalist ventures):

    In early 2015, an anonymous comment accusing a Florida company of being a scam was posted on a consumer website called RipoffReport.com.

    Around that time, the publication’s phone rang. The caller said he was Matthew Whitaker—now the acting attorney general—and he was angry, said Ed Magedson, owner of Ripoff Report. Using profanity, Mr. Whitaker demanded the removal of all negative reports about the company, World Patent Marketing Inc., Mr. Magedson said.

    Whitaker threatened Magedson, with lots of swearing. He threatened to ruin Ripoff Report, he threatened to get the government to shut it down.

    Since President Trump appointed Mr. Whitaker last week, the acting attorney general has faced questions about the extent of his involvement with World Patent Marketing, where he was a paid advisory-board member until at least 2016. The company was shut down last year by the Federal Trade Commission after it accused the firm of scamming $26 million.

    Is this really what we want in the top law guy for the whole country? Reeeally? A guy who threatened people on behalf of a scam company? REALLY?

    The threatening phone call recalled by Mr. Magedson suggests Mr. Whitaker took a more active role than previously known in shielding World Patent Marketing from outside criticism. He also wrote an August 2015 email threatening an unhappy customer, court documents show.

    The call also suggests Mr. Whitaker was aware of allegations of fraudulent activity against the company, which was later confirmed by the FTC in its accusations.

    In other words he’s a crook, he worked for a crooked company, he bullied and threatened critics of that crooked company…and he’s now the Attorney General.

    Mr. Whitaker was paid $9,375 as an advisory-board member by World Patent Marketing, court documents show. He also appeared in two promotional videos. In a December 2014 company press release, he is quoted saying that “as a former US Attorney, I would only align myself with a first class organization.”

    Sleazy enough?