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).

Did Rep. Ilhan Omar Use Campaign Funds for Personal Expenses?

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

Representative Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., doesn’t hesitate to express her scorn for America, Jews and capitalism – not necessarily in that order. Indeed, her most enduring legislative achievement to date has been to send a February 10 tweet referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as being “all about the Benjamins” (i.e., $100 bills). Yet it appears the Somalia-born Muslim freshman congresswoman, now 37, has ethics issues that are coming back to haunt her. They might not jeopardize her political career, but they just might dim the halo over her head in the eyes of her admirers.

At the start of this month, news reports surfaced that the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board has been zeroing in on Omar for possibly diverting nearly $6,000 from her campaign war chest to personal uses while serving as a member of that state’s legislature. Among the cited unauthorized purposes were travel to Boston and … Read More ➡

Special Counsel Needed Because Huber’s ‘Mystery’ Probe Is Going Nowhere

Posted on by Peter Flaherty
U.S. Attorney John Huber

Fred Lucas in The Daily Signal today reports on the investigation supposedly being conducted by John Huber, the United States Attorney for Utah. Instead of appointing another Special Counsel, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions a year ago appointed Huber to investigate the FISA warrant issued on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, as well as the Uranium One deal. From the story:

Since his appointment, Huber’s investigation has been a complete mystery, said Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group.

“There is no evidence a real investigation is taking place,” Flaherty told The Daily Signal. “We don’t have a grand jury. It doesn’t seem key witnesses were interviewed. There is certainly no evidence he has staffed up. What he is up to is a mystery.”

Flaherty said he agrees with Graham and others who support appointment of a new

… Read More ➡

The Kremlin Wanted Hillary

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

“I will tell you this about Russia, if they had anything on me, it would have come out a long time ago, probably a long time before I ran, because they would have been much better off,” President Trump said on Fox News on Wednesday evening.

Until Sunday, it was an article of faith among American liberals that Donald Trump somehow benefitted from the Russian interference in his election campaign. It is time to re-examine that theory.

There are many issues between the United States and Russia but the most fundamental is how much each spends to defend itself against the other. Trump would always favor more military spending than Hillary. This is much more consequential for Russia. America is such a prosperous country that it is not a choice between guns and butter. We buy both. The Russian economy, not well-diversified and reliant on commodity prices, is far more … Read More ➡

The Successful Mueller Misdirection

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

Those who hoped the Special Counsel would find criminal acts by President Trump are disappointed this week, but for Robert Mueller and his team it can only be “mission accomplished.”

Of course, Mueller’s team would have loved to have taken down Trump, but the more achievable goal was to misdirect attention from their own actions. The probe was initiated and staffed by the same people who prior to the election sought to use the mechanisms of the law enforcement bureaucracy to deny Trump the presidency.

Sigmund Freud called it “psychological projection,” whereby the human ego defends itself by attributing one’s own negative traits to others. That is how a group of high-level bureaucrats and prosecutors convinced themselves that Donald Trump had no regard for democratic norms and that he was a traitor in the embrace of a foreign power, allowing them to answer “a higher calling” by illegally intervening in … Read More ➡

Michael Avenatti Charged with Extortion and Fraud in Separate Cases

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

Could the fall of Michael Avenatti be at hand? For those who have been in the crosshairs of this manic, headline-addicted lawyer, it would be a welcome moment. Early yesterday afternoon, Avenatti, best-known for having represented Stormy Daniels in her civil lawsuits against President Donald Trump and Trump’s ex-personal attorney, Michael Cohen, was charged in Manhattan and Los Angeles federal courts with crimes that could land him up to 97 years in prison. In Manhattan, where he was arrested, Avenatti allegedly had tried to extort over $20 million from Nike Inc. in return for a promise not to savage the company’s reputation. In Los Angeles, he faces separate fraud charges of diverting funds from a client settlement to his personal use and of grossly overstating his income to obtain a bank loan. He is now free on $300,000 bond with travel restrictions.

National Legal and Policy Center several … Read More ➡

Boeing Tanker Scandals Never Go Away

Posted on by Peter Flaherty
A KC-46 Pegasus refuels an A-10 Thunderbolt II. (Boeing photo/John D. Parker)

It has now been more than fifteen years since the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) first exposed the “cozy dealings” between Boeing and an Air Force procurement officer named Darleen Druyun. The dealings were connected to the replacement of the nation’s fleet of mid-air refueling tankers. The aircraft, now known as the KC-46 Pegasus, refuels bombers and fighter jets on long-range missions.

The scandal that followed saw Druyun go to prison along with then-Boeing CFO Michael Sears, and the resignation of then-CEO Phil Condit.

In the intervening years, the original plan for the Air Force to lease the tankers from Boeing was scrapped. Boeing then lost the contract to an Airbus/Northrop consortium, only to pry it back through the exercise of raw political influence by the Obama administration.

A summary of the scandal that I put together … Read More ➡

Ocasio-Cortez’s Fundraising Tangle Included 527 Soft Money Operation

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

From the Washington Examiner, by Alana Goodman:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., sat on the board of a political action committee that operated the type of “soft money” group she wants to abolish through a constitutional amendment, according to federal records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

“Soft money” is cash that goes to an interest group or PAC. This means it is largely unregulated and avoids the firm limits placed on “hard money” that usually goes directly to candidates or parties.

Ocasio-Cortez was a board member of Justice Democrats, a group that sought to get progressive candidates elected, from November 2017 to 2018. The group was founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, a Harvard graduate and technology entrepreneur who became an organizer for Bernie Sanders during the socialist’s 2016 presidential campaign, and progressive media personality Cenk Uyger. Chakrabarti is now Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff

Click here to read the rest in the … Read More ➡

Ocasio-Cortez Attacks NLPC; Gets it Wrong— Twice

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

The following by Alex Griswold appeared in the Washington Free-Beacon:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) sent a false tweet Monday when attempting to correct a tweet that was also false.

A conservative nonprofit recently filed an FEC complaint against Ocasio-Cortez, arguing that the candidate violated campaign laws in her relationship with a PAC and business operated by her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti. Luke Thompson, vice president of the Republican analytics firm Applecart, was the first to call attention to Chakrabarti’s role as architect of the opaque fundraising scheme.

Left-wing Intercept reporter Jon Schwarz noted in response that Thompson had once worked at Right to Rise, a 2016 pro-Jeb Bush super PAC that was recently fined by the FEC for accepting foreign donations. Ocasio-Cortez quote-tweeted his tweet and crowed that “the creepy org filing bogus ethics complaints against me just *actually* got hit with one of the biggest fines … Read More ➡

Anti-Semitism and ‘Islamophobia’: No Moral Equivalence

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

The disgust that many people feel following Thursday’s House of Representatives resolution condemning “hate” is justified. The resolution, retrofitted to the goals of “Third World first, America last” Democratic Party radicals, was a stern rebuke to critics of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., the Somalia-born Muslim whose derogatory comments about Jews triggered the action. Since anti-Semitism and Islamophobia each constitute “hate,” the argument goes, they are equally bad. Both therefore must be condemned without regard as to whether one does more harm than another.

Many naïve, well-meaning people across the political spectrum believe this moral equivalence claptrap. For them, opposing “hate” is a no-brainer. Who possibly could be in favor of it? Given such an assumption, a condemnation by Congress of hate in all forms is necessary. To single out anti-Semitism is insufficient since it implicitly gives other forms of hate a free pass. That’s why the resolution, which passed 407-23, … Read More ➡

‘This Isn’t Dark Money, It’s Pitch Black Money’

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty appeared on Fox Business Network’s Evening Edit With Liz MacDonald on Wednesday, March 6 to discuss the Complaint by the National Legal and Policy Center’s Complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).… Read More ➡