Government Integrity Project

NLPC “blows the whistle” on government officials and interest groups engaged in questionable activities. NLPC has filed formal Complaints with a variety of authorities and regulators, including the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Congressional Ethics Committees.

NLPC supports government integrity in two additional ways: by promoting the First Amendment as the basis for campaign finance reform, and by promoting use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

How Long Can Democrats Make Excuses for Extremists Like Rep. Rashida Tlaib?

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

Rashida Tlaib isn’t a typical House of Representatives freshman. That may be why so many of her party colleagues are giving her tacit approval in the wake of her video broadside last Thursday against President Donald Trump. Rep. Tlaib, D-Mich., a Muslim born of Palestinian immigrant parents, having taken an oath of office only hours earlier, called for Trump’s impeachment in highly vulgar and inflammatory language. Party elders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, offered a rebuke to her statement. But their words seemed more motivated by strategy than by principle. And a likely major explanation for this tacit approval is that Democrats are giving a free pass to Muslims in their nonstop celebration of “diversity.” It’s an attitude that endangers national security as well as coarsens debate.

The 2018 House elections were a windfall for the Democratic Party. Exploiting resentment of President Trump and Republicans generally, the party generated a … Read More ➡

Michael Avenatti Melts Down

Posted on by Carl Horowitz
Mary Altaffer/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Michael Avenatti, plaintiff’s attorney, media presence and sworn enemy of all things Donald Trump, for the past year has been inflicting himself on the public via CNN, MSNBC and other news outlets. It’s part of his campaign to remove Trump from office on behalf of his star client, porn star Stormy Daniels. Yet Avenatti’s main issue for now appears to be whether he can avoid oblivion despite his receipt of online crowdfunding donations. His longtime former law firm, Eagan Avenatti LLP, received a final eviction notice last month from an Orange County, Calif. court despite bagging numerous outsized awards and verdicts. And he’s facing a costly divorce settlement and a domestic battery charge. His many enemies might be thinking that all this couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Michael Avenatti, now 47, a native of the St. Louis area, didn’t invent self-promotion within the legal profession. But … Read More ➡

Trump Should Make GM Repay Bailout Costs

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

In response to General Motors’ intention to close American assembly plants and effectively move manufacturing offshore, President Trump should seek repayment of costs associated with the auto bailout. The direct loss to taxpayers when the Treasury sold the last of its GM shares in 2013 was approximately $10 billion.

There is precedent for requiring direct bailout costs to be paid back. In January 2010, President Obama proposed a new fee on the banks that took TARP funds, even though TARP funds were already in the process of being paid back, and with interest. Obama said, “We want out money back. We want our money back, and we are going to get it.”

In 2013, the National Legal and Policy Center asked then-GM CEO Dan Akerson to repay the $10 billion, prompting his widely publicized refusal during a speech at the National Press Club.

The rationale for the bailout was to … Read More ➡

Maxine Waters’ Daughter Rakes in $200K for Slate Mailers This Election

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

This article by Joe Schoffstall appears on the The Free Beacon website:

The daughter of Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) will collect more than $200,000 from her mother’s campaign after its debts are paid off for leading a lucrative slate mailer operation, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Karen Waters has pulled in hefty payments from the campaign to run a slate mailer operation after the FEC issued an advisory opinion in October 2004 allowing Waters to run the operation from the Citizens for Waters, her mother’s campaign committee. Prior to 2006, Karen ran the arrangement through LA Vote, a state committee in California.

Karen is in charge of slate mailers, or endorsement mailers, in which candidates pay Rep. Waters’s campaign to appear on mailers that are sent to more than 200,000 residents in the South Central Los Angeles area, where Waters holds a good amount of clout. The mailers contain … Read More ➡

The Illegal Immigrant Caravan: Made in Chicago

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

The Central American human caravan, at this writing somewhere in Mexico, still has a long way to go before it (illegally) reaches our southern border. The distance from its country of origin, Honduras, to the nearest U.S. city, McAllen, Tex., is more than a thousand miles. That’s quite a haul. The Bataan Death March of April 1942, an atrocity conducted at Japanese gunpoint, was only 65 miles long. Given the physical risks, there can be no doubt that the caravan’s march, under cover of humanitarian impulses, is being enabled from above. There is no other way these people could have traveled as far as they have. It thus should come as no shock that this project is the handiwork of a tight network of radical activists in America.

By various accounts, the center of gravity for this campaign is a Chicago organization called Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which translated from … Read More ➡

Judge Dismisses Michael Avenatti’s Frivolous Lawsuit on Behalf of Stormy Daniels

Posted on by Carl Horowitz
Mary Altaffer/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Stormy Daniels, porn star/stripper extraordinaire, has been denied a starring role – at least for now. On Monday, a Los Angeles federal court tossed out Daniels’ defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump filed in April by her lawyer, Michael Avenatti. The suit was based on a tweet by Trump calling her allegation of being threatened by a strange man on a Las Vegas parking lot back in 2011 “a total con job.” According to U.S. District Judge S. James Otero, the president’s message was “rhetorical hyperbole” of the sort one associates with standard political discourse. Avenatti doesn’t think so. He’s already filed an appeal. And thanks in part to the publicity he generated in opposition to Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation, he now has widespread support among Democratic senators and the general public.

Stephanie Clifford aka “Stormy Daniels,” age 39, a Louisiana native, has worked in the adult film … Read More ➡

Trump Warned of Mueller ‘Perjury Trap’

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

Darren Samuelsohn of Politico today reports, according to a source, that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has delivered to President Trump written questions related to his Russia collusion probe. From the article:

Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal & Policy Center, warned on Thursday against Trump’s submitting written responses “in any way” given the legal consequences.

“Mueller has come up so empty on collusion that this may be a final stab at a perjury trap,” said Flaherty, who runs a conservative nonprofit that is funding a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the special counsel’s appointment.

Click here to read the entire piece in Politico.

 

 … Read More ➡

Reply Brief Filed in Constitutional Challenge to Mueller

Posted on by Peter Flaherty
Andrew Miller

On October 9, 2018, constitutional and appellate attorney Paul Kamenar filed his reply to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s brief in the case of Andrew Miller v. United States of America before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Kamenar represents Andrew Miller, a witness in Mueller’s investigation, who has declined to appear before the Grand Jury convened by Mueller on the basis that Mueller’s appointment is unconstitutional. Miller lost at the District Court level, a decision he is appealing. Oral arguments are scheduled for November 8, two days after the midterm elections. Kamenar’s representation of Miller is made possible by the National Legal and Policy Center and its supporters around the country.

The brief argues, among other things, that Mueller is a “principal officer” under the Constitution and has been granted “wide discretion” by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Mueller claims in his brief that … Read More ➡

Until Mel Watt Resigns, There’s a Cloud Over FHFA

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

While the Senate has been poring over the youthful misadventures of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, several House lawmakers, with far less fanfare, have been focusing on a more plausible charge of misconduct involving an ex-colleague, Mel Watt. On September 26, Watt, a former 11-term North Carolina congressman who since January 2014 has headed the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), was grilled at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee concerning allegations about his sexual harassment of a female FHFA employee. “She deserves to be heard and she needs to be heard,” said Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Tex. Watt denies all wrongdoing, but evidence might not be on his side.

Melvin Luther “Mel” Watt, now 73, a trained lawyer and a native of Charlotte, first was elected to Congress in 1992, a beneficiary of gerrymandering to ensure black representation. During his tenure, he specialized in banking, housing and economic development … Read More ➡

New York Governor Cuomo Protects Forced Public-Employee Unionism

Posted on by Carl Horowitz
(Sipa via AP Images)

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME was a stunning blow to over 40 years of public-sector union monopoly power. Union leaders for their part are pushing back. They have plenty of allies in state governments, and perhaps no state is as vociferous as New York. Indeed, on June 27, the day of the ruling, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order to protect union members from outside intimidation – ironic, given the pressure unions often use to collect dues. The State of New York also has begun deducting dues from the pay of government workers without even checking to see if they are members. And now a prominent lawmaker wants taxpayers to reimburse unions for foregone dues.

State and local officials across the country, especially in non-Right to Work states, are helping to lead a popular resistance to Trump administration policies and court … Read More ➡