Exclusive Excerpt—Matthew Whitaker: ‘Above the Law: The Inside Story of How the Justice Department Tried to Subvert President Trump’
Matthew Whitaker19 May 20201,544
6:03
The following exclusive excerpt is from Matthew Whitaker’s new book, Above the Law: The Inside Story of How the Justice Department Tried to Subvert President Trump.I had been Acting Attorney General for fifteen days at the time of that Thanksgiving Day press conference, and I had been presumed guilty—of bias against the Mueller investigation, of being a constitutional “nobody†(since acting cabinet heads don’t require Senate confirmation under the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act), and because I had provided very little legal advice to a company that no longer existed and that later had fallen afoul of the law (for reasons completely unrelated to my advice).
Very quickly, I learned that if you are a political appointee in President Trump’s administration, the media and congressional Democrats, among others, immediately presume you must be guilty of something and will stop at nothing to tear you down. If you are a “career official,†on the other hand, with no evidence of support for the President, then you are regarded as someone free of malice, a modestly paid civil servant toiling with only the nation’s best intentions at heart. In the press, “career official†is practically a synonym for “innocent,†even, or especially, if that career official is revealed to be part of the “Resistance.â€
Leaking to the press was, unfortunately, endemic among the more politically minded officials of the Justice Department. I was far from the only victim. In fact, even anti-Trumpers could be the victims when other officials were trying to protect their own backs. For instance, FBI lawyer Lisa Page publicly complained about “my Justice Department betraying us†when her texts unrelated to the Inspector General’s investigation were leaked by the Justice Department to the press.
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/05/19/exclusive-excerpt-matthew-whitaker-above-the-law-the-inside-story-of-how-the-justice-department-tried-to-subvert-president-trump/
