Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons--and He Never Registered as a Lobbyist

Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker left the Trump administration and almost immediately started asking for presidential pardons—without registering as a lobbyist.

In Donald Trump’s final months in office, lobbyists swarmed the White House in hopes of securing pardons for their clients. It was a cash bonanza for Beltway insiders aspiring to bend the aggrieved president’s ear, as disclosures required by federal law later revealed.

But one person stands out among that crowd, both for his former role in the Trump administration and for the fact that he never registered as a lobbyist—even though he was being paid $400,000 by a conservative “dark money” group that had tapped him to lead its efforts to secure pardons and commutations.

Matthew Whitaker held senior roles in Trump’s Justice Department from September 2017 to February 2019, finishing off his DOJ tenure with a three-month stint as the acting attorney general. And when he finally departed the administration, he found quite the cushy gig: chairing a new project for the right-wing nonprofit FreedomWorks.

The group brought Whitaker on in March 2020 to head up its new “American Freedom Initiative,” which FreedomWorks claimed “aims to recommend deserving individuals to the Trump administration for pardons and commutations.” A previously unreported federal filing from FreedomWorks, which does not have to disclose its donors, shows that the organization paid Whitaker $400,000 last year in unspecified “consulting” fees.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dark-money-group-paid-former-trump-ag-matthew-whitaker-to-ask-for-pardonsand-never-registered-as-a-lobbyist

Guess it's just too much to ask a Republican former acting Attorney General to follow the law.