Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker misled the Federal Trade Commission’s investigators as he was stepping into his role as the Justice Department’s chief of staff last year, a new report said Friday.
After trying to reach Whitaker about a Miami company where he was on the advisory board, an FTC investigator emailed colleagues to say that he finally got hold of Whitaker.
The future acting AG told the investigator that he was willing to cooperate and declared that he “never emailed or wrote to consumers” in his consulting role, Bloomberg reported, citing new documents.
But that statement, to James Evans of the FTC, appears to be inaccurate.
Whitaker had written a letter in 2015 to a disgruntled customer who planned to report the company, World Patent Marketing, to the Better Business Bureau.
In the letter, which was included in the FTC’s disclosure and reported previously by the news media, Whitaker threatened the customer.
“I am assuming you understand there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your ‘group’ are doing,” he wrote.
In the letter, Whitaker noted that he was a former US attorney in Iowa and that he was aware that the customer had complained to the company’s chief executive officer, Scott Cooper, in the past.
“I am familiar with your background and your history with Scott,” Whitaker wrote. “Understand that we take threats like this quite seriously.”
President Trump appointed Whitaker acting attorney general after forcing Jeff Sessions to step down.
That appointment, outside the usual chain of succession, is now being challenged in several court cases.
The documents, produced Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, contain internal correspondence among FTC investigators, who expressed frustration at being unable to reach Whitaker at several points during 2017.
At the time, the agency was investigating complaints about World Patent Marketing, which it described as an “invention promotion scheme” that it accused of “bilking millions of dollars from consumers.”
The emails also convey FTC investigators’ shock in October 2017 when — in the latter stages of their investigation — Whitaker was suddenly named chief of staff to Sessions.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Evans, who works for the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote on Oct. 24, 2017. “Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States.”
A key takeaway from the FTC documents is that World Patent Marketing continuously used Whitaker’s background as a US attorney to impress potential clients and bully perceived enemies.
