The acting Attorney General is a GOP insider and former U.S. Attorney from Iowa who made two failed bids for public office and has openly criticized special counsel Robert Mueller.
Matthew Whitaker, who spent the past year as ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff, was named as his boss’ temporary replacement Wednesday by President Trump.
The 49-year-old has Justice Department experience, having served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa from 2004-2009 after being appointed by former President George W. Bush. However, the majority of his career has been spent in private practice, including at a Des Moines law firm he founded with other Republican Party activists in 2009.
Whitaker, an Iowa native, also made two failed bids for state office, running once for state treasurer and then for U.S. Senate. During his bid for a Senate seat, Whitaker listed ultraconservative Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) as inspirations, according to The Des Moines Register.
Before working for Sessions, Whitaker was the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a conservative watchdog group that often hounds Hillary Clinton and other Democrats over allegations of ethical violations.
Former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter said Whitaker has a reputation as a professional.
“There’s been talk about him,” Cotter said, noting that he never worked with the newly named top law enforcement official. “He’s a professional. He’s savvy. Clearly he’s someone who knows the internal politics at DOJ.”
Des Moines attorney Guy Cook, a Democrat who has known Whitaker for years, called him a clear thinker and a “no-nonsense guy who is not to be underestimated.”
“But I think most importantly, from the President’s perspective, he’s loyal,” Cook told the Associated Press. He said that reasonable people can agree with Whitaker’s perspective on the Mueller investigation, but “I’m sure that’s something that got the President’s attention.”
In recent years, Whitaker spent time as a talking head on CNN — often blasting Mueller over reports that the special counsel was eyeing Trump’s finances and defending the President’s son for taking a meeting with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
“You would always take the meeting,” he said during an appearance on CNN, adding that “you certainly want to have any advantage, any legal advantage you can.”
He also offered an eerily prescient take on what could happen if Trump decided to replace Sessions.
“So I could see a scenario where Jeff Sessions is replaced with a recess appointment and that attorney general doesn’t fire Bob Mueller, but he just reduces his budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt,” Whitaker said on CNN last year.
Muller was appointed to oversee the federal investigation into Russian meddling and the possibility that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election after Sessions recused himself from the probe.
In August 2017, Whitaker penned an op-ed for CNN titled, “Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going too far,” asserting that “Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing.”
“It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign,” he wrote. “That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.”
A month later he was named as Sessions’ chief of staff.
