On Monday, Dahlia Lithwick and I wrote an article in Slate arguing that the Senate should not confirm William Barr, Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, merely to oust Matthew Whitaker, who is currently serving as acting attorney general. We noted that Whitaker was arguably appointed in violation of the Constitution and previously worked for a patent company that was shuttered and fined by the Federal Trade Commission for alleged fraud. We also pointed out that, as a federal prosecutor, Whitaker spearheaded an unsuccessful prosecution of Iowa’s first openly gay lawmaker, who believed Whitaker was motivated by homophobia. And we wrote that Whitaker repeatedly criticized Robert Mueller’s investigation on TV in 2017.
In response to this article, Whitaker’s wife, Marci, sent me an email on Wednesday morning. (Her email address and the phone number listed in the email footer match those listed in publicly available documents, and Slate’s director of technology confirmed that the email originated from mail servers operated by her company.) Marci Whitaker, who requested that her email address and phone number not be used in an “ill manner” but did not ask for this correspondence to be considered off the record, made several noteworthy assertions about her husband’s work, the Mueller probe, and the government shutdown. (Her full email is printed at the bottom of this post.)
slate.com/…
It’s four long paragraphs of rambling to include:
It isn’t really or shouldn’t be that controversial to state that the Mueller investigation should stay within the parameters given. Particularly when that is said more than a year prior as the investigation is just beginning. Why would a person need to recuse oneself for that mild statement? If abundance of caution is the standard, anyone who ever spent 5 minutes contemplating the topic would need to do so. And by all means, assume that a person who speculated on a hypothetical scenario would then put some dark plan into motion, when by all accounts, the investigation is wrapping up and they [sic] eyes of the nation are upon them. Yeah, that’s pretty realistic. Oh, and I guess you missed that the Supreme Court decided not to take up the temporary appointment challenge.