Government

Matt Whitaker Deciding To Cosplay As A.G. Is How I Imagine Most Blackface Decisions Come To Pass

Whitaker ignored an ethics opinion and pretended to be A.G. anyway.

By  
on

Former Tight End Matt Whitaker

You ever see a photo of a white person in blackface and just think “how?” Like, you know physically how it all happened, but your mind is just boggled by how a person slathered on some makeup, looked at themselves in the mirror and decided “yeah, I’m going to leave the house like this.” Didn’t they think? Didn’t they ask anybody whether this was a good idea? HOW does something like blackface keep happening?

People don’t usually release memos and issue press statements about their decision to wear blackface, but Matt Whitaker’s excuses for pretending to be the Attorney General of the United States gives us an insight into the same kind of thinking.

Matt Whitaker is not the Attorney General, acting or otherwise. His elevation is an illegal appointment and, to the extent he does anything, an aggrieved party should have standing to sue Whitaker and nullify all of his actions under recent Supreme Court precedent. The nullification of Whitaker takes for granted that Republican Supreme Court justices will apply the same rules to Republican appointees as they apply to Democratic ones, but still. This guy is acting under authority that is apparent to no one.

If he were the real A.G., Whitaker would be charged with oversight over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference with our elections. Of course, the last real A.G. we had, Confederate Jeff Sessions, had to recuse himself from oversight of that investigation. Sessions had to recuse because he lied to Congress about his interactions with Russians during the campaign. Whitaker doesn’t have that kind of exposure, he’s just a guy who has been bad mouthing the investigation and fantasizing about ways to shut it down.

Which is pretty bad! He should probably recuse himself from overseeing an investigation he’s on the record as saying shouldn’t exist for political reasons.

Whitaker apparently sought an ethics opinion from the Department of Justice. Justice allegedly told him he should recuse, because the appearance of impropriety. Whitaker ignored that opinion and decided not to recuse himself. He said he didn’t want to “set a precedent” that an A.G. should recuse over the mere appearance of bias. That is a damn fool thing to say because the appearance of bias is a precedent under which previous A.G.s have recused themselves. Loretta Lynch, for instance, recused herself from the Clinton email thing after Bill Clinton foolishly spoke to her about something on a plane. There was no actual illegality there, just bad optics. And yet, Lynch stepped aside, setting the stage for James Comey to hand the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

Sponsored

Writing at Just Security, Marty Lederman points out that even Whitaker’s “I do what I want” argument is insufficient to explain why he can do what he wants.

Whitaker did not take their advice. Why not? As far as we can tell from the letter’s explanation, Whitaker concluded that he would, in fact, be impartial. The letter also implies, without saying so directly, a judgment by Whitaker that a reasonable person shouldn’t question his impartiality, mostly because of the all the positive and appropriate statements he’s made about Mueller since he stopped making the inappropriate comments 16 months ago.

I think most observers will agree with the senior DOJ ethics officials rather than Whitaker on whether a reasonable, informed person would question his impartiality…

OK, now let’s proceed with the remainder of the § 2635.502(d) assessment.

Uh, wait a sec. It’s not there. The letter simply stops at that point, as if that were enough.

Notice what’s conspicuously missing: There is no mention of what the Government’s “interest” might be “in [Whitaker’s] participation” in the Russia investigation, let alone any discussion of why that interest might possibly “outweigh[] the concern that a reasonable person may question the integrity of the agency’s programs and operations.” And, in particular, the letter does not suggest that Whitaker so much as considered “the … importance of [his own] role in the matter” or “[t]he difficulty of reassigning the matter to another employee.”

That is to say: The letter offers absolutely no reason why it would be of any value to the Department or the administration of Justice–indeed, why it would be of any value to anyone or anything at all, save the personal interests of Donald Trump–for Whitaker to replace Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as the superintendent of the Russia investigation.

See, this is how people who wear blackface think. It’s an a priori bad idea. They ask their friends and their reasonable ones say “no, that’s a bad idea.” But then they lacquer their face up anyway and don’t even consider what possible benefit there is to doing that! Why are you wearing blackface other than to piss people off?

Whitaker is already the Attorney General in costume only. Now he’s masquerading in blackface as the head of the Russia investigation. He’s a joke and a disgrace and this charade cannot end quickly enough.

What’s Noticeably Missing from the Whitaker Nonrecusal Explanation [Just Security]

Sponsored

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

Topics

, , ,