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).

David Kessler, Co-Chair of Biden’s COVID Task Force and Possible HHS Secretary, Has History of Overcharging Taxpayers for His Travel as Uncovered by Ethics Watchdog Group

Posted on by NLPC Staff

David Kessler, co-chair of Joseph Biden’s COVID-19 task force, and a leading candidate to be his Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, resigned as President Clinton’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner in late November 1996 (after Clinton’s re-election) amid controversy for overbilling his travel expenses during his tenure and shortly after a court upheld a subpoena for his deposition in a major FDA case.

The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), which led the investigation into Kessler’s travel expenses when Kessler was FDA Commissioner, is calling upon Joe Biden to dismiss Kessler from his COVID task force and remove him from consideration for HHS Secretary.

NLPC’s investigation included hundreds of FOIA requests for Kessler’s travel vouchers and itineraries over a five-year period that were turned over to the House of Representatives Oversight Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee at the time, which launched an investigation, including a referral to the … Read More ➡

Would Tech Oligarchs Dominate a Biden Administration?

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Eric Schmidt/PHOTO: jdlasica (CC)

Should Joe Biden end up being the next President of the United States, former Alphabet (parent company of Google) CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt has been talked about the most as his top advisor for tech issues.

The Financial Times reported last week that Biden is looking to the big names in Silicon Valley to create an in-White-House tech task force, led by Schmidt. The article said Biden has already hired away top executives from Apple and Facebook for his prospective transition team. And according to CBS News, his political team is advised by executives with tech firms formed by Schmidt and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, both mega-donors for Biden’s election efforts.

Some far-leftists apparently held out hope that Biden might gravitate towards the Elizabeth Warren “break up Big Tech” perspective and embrace more big government regulation, especially after he approved an October … Read More ➡

Rep. Ilhan Omar Cuts Off Husband’s Fund Raising Firm

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune by Stephen Montemayor:

Tim Mynett and Ilhan Omar

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar has told supporters that her campaign is no longer doing business with her husband’s political consulting firm, a connection that had previously sparked scrutiny and complaints to campaign finance watchdogs.

In an e-mail late Sunday, Omar said her campaign was terminating its contract with the firm to “make sure that anybody who is supporting our campaign with their time or financial support feels there is no perceived issue with that support.”

From the same article:

Omar stopped short of adequately addressing concerns about how the money was spent by E Street Group, said Thomas Anderson, a spokesman for the National Legal and Policy Center, the group that filed the initial complaint. “We feel Congresswoman Omar is attempting to clean up a mess we laid out in our complaint.”

Click here to read the … Read More ➡

VA Official Charmain Bogue Did Not Disclose Links to Outside Group

Posted on by NLPC Staff
Charmain Bogue

Last week, NLPC raised important ethical questions about an effort to influence the Veterans Administration (VA) to limit veterans’ ability to use their GI Bill benefits at certain colleges.

An outside interest group opposed to for-profit education, Veterans Education Success (VES), drove the effort. VES paid the husband of a key career official at the VA, Charmain Bogue, while at the same time advocating that she take action to further VES’s ideological crusade against for-profit schools.

Now, NLPC has obtained the official federal financial disclosure forms for Charmain Bogue. The forms raise more questions than they answer about her husband Barrett Bogue’s income from VES.

Under the section where a spouse’s income is supposed to be disclosed, Charmain Bogue wrote only, “Self-Employed (Consulting Firm)” and listed the income type as “Salary, Consulting Fees.” There is no disclosure of the name of the firm or the amount of income … Read More ➡

Grassley Joins Call for FARA Investigation of Hunter Biden

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Hunter Biden/IMAGE: YouTube

Following a complaint filed by National Legal and Policy Center with the Department of Justice that demanded an investigation of the son and brother of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has made a similar request.

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, wrote a detailed, seven-page letter to Attorney General William Barr on Monday, urging him to probe Hunter Biden and James Biden – the son and brother of the former vice president, respectively – about deals they cut with a state-owned Chinese energy company and their representation of foreign actors in the United States. 

The inquiry focuses on the Bidens’ work with CEFC China Energy Co. Ltd., which Grassley accurately characterized as “an extension of the Chinese government.” He asked Barr to investigate whether the Bidens violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to notify the Justice Department … Read More ➡

Are For-Profit College ‘Critics’ Up to Their Old Tricks?

Posted on by NLPC Staff
Charmain Bogue

About a decade ago, NLPC confronted a network of forces with undisclosed financial interests and ideological motives set out to destroy an entire industry.

They launched a campaign targeting companies who engage in the business of higher education because they earn profit and compete with the much larger traditional non-profit schools. The campaign included a lengthy Senate inquiry, complete with controversial hearings and over-hyped government reports like the “hatchet job” that the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) had to take the virtually unprecedented step of correcting.

At the time, NLPC was critical of Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and his staff for working with officials in the Obama administration’s Department of Education and outsiders seeking to profit from their effort to destroy for-profit colleges.

So, naturally it piqued our interest to learn that some of the old players appear to have been running the same playbook, this … Read More ➡

Hunter & James Biden Failed to Register as Foreign Agents While Representing Chinese Company

Posted on by NLPC Staff
Hunter Biden

From RealClearInvestigations by Paul Sperry:

A search of Justice Department databases reveals that Hunter Biden failed to register as a foreign agent while promoting the interests of foreign business partners in Washington, including brokering meetings with his father and other government officials, and RealClear Investigations has learned that at least one Senate committee is investigating whether Joe Biden’s son violated federal laws requiring disclosure of such foreign contacts.

The Obama administration did not prosecute Hunter Biden for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite its much more aggressive pursuit of FARA cases relative to other administrations — including its opening of criminal investigations on no fewer than six Trump campaign advisers in 2016.

Click here to read the rest on RealClearInvestigations.com.… Read More ➡

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink To Be Biden’s Treasury Secretary Fresh Off China Partnership?

Posted on by Paul Chesser
Larry Fink/IMAGE: YouTube

Perfect timing?

BlackRock and CEO Larry Fink just got permission in August from regulators in China to start a mutual fund business there, a next step in the firm’s ever-expanding portfolio of investment activity with the communist nation.

At the same time there’s an election next week, and many expect Democrat Joe Biden to win. Fink’s name is often floated as his possible Treasury Secretary. He reportedly wanted the job in a Hillary Clinton administration, but then she lost.

Biden might like the China-enthusiast Fink for the role, since the former vice president was recently implicated as a potential beneficiary of investment in a scheme cooked up by his son Hunter and his business partners with now-bankrupt CEFC China Energy. A 2017 email – captured in a now-famous laptop computer left and ignored by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop, and then turned over … Read More ➡