That he was the sole member is not relevant.
And you're misunderstanding the issue of 'non profit': he was not operating a profitable entity. His comp. doesn't count as profit for the org.
Again - there's nothing here. He was part of a private firm that did advocacy, among other things. 1/2 of the people that go into government go in from private firms, and we know nothing about their relationships otherwise.
This guy worked for this odd non-profit long before anyone could have conceived that he would be the US chief attorney, so there's no smoke here really.
That he was the sole paid employee is relevant to the minimizing deflection you keep making that he was merely “part of” the entity.
> And you're misunderstanding the issue of 'non profit'
No, I'm not (but you are).
> he was not operating a profitable entity.
Not that that is germane to anything, but non-profit doesn't mean that an organization isn't profitable, it means that there are no equity claims on any profits (that is, it doesn't return profits to it's owners.)
> His comp. doesn't count as profit for the org.
Which would be relevant if he issue was whether the org was making profits, but not when it is whether he was making profits.
> This guy worked for this odd non-profit long before anyone could have conceived that he would be the US chief attorney, so there's no smoke here really.
The former might be relevant to the latter if the accusation was that he was being bribed in anticipation of becoming AG, rather than the opacity of the background of a non-Senate-confirmed and otherwise non-publicly-vetted appointee as Acting Attorney General outside the normal line of succession.
> "So it very much seems like he was running around doing radio interviews and making (rather large) profits."
This statement implies a lack of understanding of what a 'non profit' is, because there is no indication of profit here.
But it doesn't matter - by all accounts, this was just a regular non-profit. There's nothing curious about it.
> "The former might be relevant to the latter if the accusation was that he was being bribed in anticipation of becoming AG"
He was employed there since 2014 - you're implication would be that somehow, years before Trump was elected, years before his nomination, that someone could have bribed him - which is totally far fetched.
Also - again - hypocritical if you don't apply the same logic to other members of such offices, all of whom have 'opaque' financial backgrounds were they in private office. Who paid Loretta Lynch's millions for 10 years before she became AG? And where was the uproar then?
There are no loaded dice here.
Just regular DC inanity.
(1) you keep explicitly demonstrating (not merely implying) complete ignorance of what a nonprofit is, because you keep saying that making profits is relevant to that status (it's not, returning them to investors is.)
(2) moreover, you keep demonstrating failure at reading comprehension at the same time, by stubbornly (now even after the error was pointed out) confusing a statement about Whittaker personally profiting with a statement about the nonprofit from which he was profiting doing so.
> He was employed there since 2014 - you're implication would be that somehow, years before Trump was elected, years before his nomination, that someone could have bribed him
No, my explicit claim was that your continuing to point to the fact that he was employed there before anyone could have predicted he would become AG would only be relevant if someone had made the outlandish claim you suggest, but that you are beating a strawman because literally no one anywhere has made that claim.
It was a non-profit. He got paid. That's it. There's nothing to bring up. So why would you otherwise?
----
" but that you are beating a strawman because literally no one anywhere has made that claim."
Really?
"This is intellectually lazy its a clear case of corruption" ... is what someone wrote just above - and is the general implication of those commenting here.
The entire thread is devoted to insinuating that this guy has some kind of major conflict of interest due to his shady involvement with this non-profit.
So, no, it's not a 'straw man' - I'm responding directly to the assertion.
There is nothing here.
A curious but otherwise normal non-profit, in operation long before anything relevant.
There's probably no fire, there's not even any smoke.
It is, however, the sort of public humiliation one might be willing to accept as an employee of Completely Ordinary People for the Advancement of Motivated Reasoning and Large Paychecks.
Which is irrelevant, as it's still revenue AND profit for him.
And that is also irrelevant.
>>> He had a job and got paid for it <<<
Is this now the threshold for sinister activity?
Are you people reading your own words?
The implication of the OP regarding 'profit' was that there was something remiss re: 'non profit'.
There isn't.
There is no smoke here.
A guy had a job in the private sector, very much like most others before they go into public office.
That's it.
So, hopefully, they'll have a chance for vetting.
But we'll find out about as much about his non-profits backers as we did about Loretta Lynch clients while she was in private practice before become AG - which is not much.
Money he receives during holding public office is another story altogether.
Thy hypocrisy on this thread is byzantine, people have lost their marbles.
I'm so glad I don't have a stake in this game, and thankful everyday I'm not caught up in American political delusions which so few seem to actually be able to escape.
Never wrote the above, never said that is the threshold, so not ever sure what you're going on about.
The threshold of "sinister activity" is getting money from unknown sources. That would be problematic whether you're DA or a private citizen (e.g. for money laundering etc). Doubly so if you're supposedly in an organization for "Accountability and Civic Trust", where you're making statements with political impact against policies, politicians and parties, as an "non profit" "ngo", while getting paid millions from unknown donors (with whatever agendas). Doubly so if it's 2017 and you continue getting paid from them while getting to the post of chief of staff of Sessions.
>Are you people reading your own words?
Well, what you quoted above are not "my own words", so there's that.
- What did you do before? - I did [stuff] - For who? - Not telling.
Yeah, that sounds legit.
Also, non-profit just refers to the structure of the corporation for tax purposes. It’s also not a synonym for charity.
A guy worked for a private entity for years.
That's it.
There's no story here.
Nobody working for the Gov. not even AG is going to be required to list all of those who paid into such entities over the past - and it only demonstrates the sad level of partisanship here that everyone should try to consider as much for this guy.
If there are some nefarious dealings then, fine, hopefully they will come to light.
Other than that, there is nothing here, not even smoke
People get paid a lot in high powered situations.
Fundraisers for charities make a fortune.
Members of Boards get paid a fortune for seemingly not doing a lot.
Tons of people in 'think tanks' are paid a fortune for their roles.
There's really not much out of line here.
If he was receiving money while on the public dole - that's another story.
If he 'all of a sudden' got a pile of cash whilst we knew he was going to be AG - different story.
But his involvement in the non-profit predates any of the Trumpian shenanigans, so this is really a non story.
If you apply the same degree of scrutiny to non-Trump officials from other eras, you run into the same problems.
Most massively: the Clinton Global Wealth Initiative. Basically a super-massive kitty-fund for the Clinton family, that actors - many of them nefarious - from all sorts of shady places in the world have paid into while Clinton was Secretary of State ! Her fund was literally receiving millions of dollars from state actors she was doing public business with. There was an example of a man in Chicago who made a $200K donation, and then was appointed to a board (after a scandal he was withdrawn) ... but there's basically no way to detangle Clinton from that fund, no matter how above board she is. Nobody in government should be managing a several hundred million dollar fund that their peers are contributing to. I'm not hinting that she was corrupt, rather, the conflict of interest is as big as you can get and there wasn't much fuss over it.
“Part of” doesn't really capture his status as the sole paid employee.
> Seems he ran around doing radio interviews, not making profits.
The $1.2 million isn't the contribution to the entity that paid expenses and his salary, it's his salary from the entity. So it very much seems like he was running around doing radio interviews and making (rather large) profits.