Trump’s New “Attorney General” Has a Long History of Absurd Scams
Matthew Whitaker, who replaced the now-fired Jeff Sessions as acting attorney general fewer than 24 hours after last week's midterm elections, is an uncompromising Trump loyalist and longtime Robert Mueller critic, installed in the position for the specific purpose of undermining the special counsel's investigation and, if necessary, bringing it to a swift, dramatic, and premature conclusion. His presence in the Department of Justice is now perhaps the single greatest threat to the rule of law in this country, other than the continued presence in the White House of his crimes-happy benefactor.
In a pitch-perfect Trumpian twist, it turns out that before ascending to his current role, Matthew Whitaker was also a cartoonish, grifting dope who shilled for a company that hawked time-travel cryptocurrencies, Bigfoot dolls, and toilets specially designed for men with big dicks—and that was shut down for good and paid a $26 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year for its alleged wrongdoing.
In 2014, according to Mother Jones, Whitaker became a board member of an outfit called World Patent Marketing, which cajoled investors into backing an array of patent-pending products that some might charitably describe as "questionable." And although board membership does not always indicate active involvement with a given enterprise, he was an enthusiastic supporter of WPM's three-o'clock-in-the-morning-infomercial-type garbage and happily invoked his status as a former U.S. attorney in order to defend business practices that some might charitably describe as "fraud." From Mother Jones:
[P]ublic records show he had substantial involvement with the company and its aggressive response to disgruntled customers and critics of its questionable practices. Whitaker joined the firm’s advisory board a month after it was attacked on a website called ripoffreport.com, which posts consumer complaints. In a report on the site, a writer claimed to have duped the firm into offering to help him get a patent for a fake idea: a fried chicken and waffle sandwich. “You cannot make a patent on a sandwich, yet they approved it,” the person wrote.
The WPM press release introducing the novelty bathroom fixture, dubbed the "MASCULINE TOILET"—all caps in original, of course—explains the problem the invention purports to solve in vivid, hilarious fashion:
The narrower curvature at the front of the toilet creates limited space for male genitalia when a man sits on the toilet seat. This limited space can cause contact from male genitalia with portions of the toilet, which is undesirable as those portions may be contaminated from human waste.
...
The distance between the rim and the water surface needs to be long enough to ensure there is no risk of contact. The average male genitalia is between 5" and 6". However, this invention is designed for those of us who measure longer than that. I estimate that a 12" distance is adequate enough for most well-endowed men, though I would not be surprised if there are cases who need a greater distance. Nevertheless, for the time being, this is a good starting point. An "extra long" [XL] version can always be created if needed.
Good to know! The Washington Post notes that Whitaker also seems to have dabbled in providing legal representation for the company, threatening disgruntled customers using tactics borrowed from a straight-to-Redbox Billions knockoff. An exhaustive 2017 Miami New Times investigation into the Florida company yielded e-mails from Whitaker in which he, among other things, accuses a complainant of engaging in "possible blackmail or extortion" attempts. "There could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you," he wrote. The reply e-mail he received from one "A Rudsky" is a masterpiece of the go-fuck-yourself genre.
Here, watch as the man who would one day become the United States' current chief law-enforcement officer gestures vaguely at a 3-D rendering of a razor blade like he's wearing a headset mic and demonstrating the features of a very expensive juicer at a Costco kiosk:
WPM's ignominious end at the FTC's hands in 2018 threatened to deprive Whitaker of what had been a lucrative hustle. Fortunately for him, though, he had already moved on to auditioning for a role in the Trump administration via TV appearances in which he criticized the Mueller investigation, and helpfully laid out a road map for how a hypothetical attorney general who is not Jeff Sessions—say, a handsome cue-balled gentleman who played college football at the University of Iowa, and thereafter went on to serve as a U.S. attorney—could end it. Obviously, this was a plan that worked well.
The legality of Whitaker's appointment to a position that typically requires Senate confirmation is an open question, and the subject of ongoing litigation. But in the meantime, he gets to enjoy the payoff of the most ambitious con of a career defined by ambitious cons, and perhaps obstruct a little justice in the process.
