Several of President Donald Trump’s personal attorneys have opened the White House up to yet another ethics minefield. With Trump’s impeachment acquittal in the rearview mirror, some on his legal team will be well-positioned to help their wealthy clients with business before the Trump administration, potentially leading 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into a new ethical morass.
These attorneys are facing questions ranging from controversies involving their current or recent clients, how they’re being compensated, and whether they may have violated tax law in their defense of the president.
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Over the last four decades, the government’s national security surveillance powers have increased significantly; whenever Congress passes a new law to further this expansion, as it did with the PATRIOT Act, it’s building onto FISA.
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The unrestricted use of facial recognition technology is clearly incompatible with a democratic society. This mass surveillance is misguided and sinister. We must push back before it’s too late.
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The Senate must continue to take even stronger steps to re-assert its authority, including holding hearings on the strike against Qassem Soleimani, and voting to repeal the 2002 Iraq War authorization, as the House of Representatives recently did. The Constitution gives Congress, not the President, the power to declare war.
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NEW: The Bunker
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After nearly 20 years of winless wars following 9/11, and a Pentagon budget that is well above the Cold War average, U.S. national security spending has never been a more target-rich environment. That is why the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information has launched The Bunker, a precision-guided e-newsletter targeting your inbox most every week. Sign up now!
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POGO in the News
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The Project on Government Oversight’s Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette said the foreign funding poses a risk to the national interest, particularly when it comes to funding from America’s adversaries.
“There are large gaps in [FARA] that allow for a lot of the types of foreign influence we’re talking about here to continue to occur and it goes unregistered and unrecorded,” Mr. Hedtler-Gaudette said. “We also see this in the academic space a lot where there are a lot of universities and colleges here in America who are receiving a lot of money from foreign entities.”
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After Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) publicly named the alleged Ukraine whistleblower on the Senate floor week, there is now an effort underway to ensure that never happens again. The Project On Government Oversight is spearheading a letter calling on the Senate to overhaul its rules to prohibit lawmakers from outing whistleblowers. The letter, which was shared exclusively with your Huddle host, will be sent this morning and is also signed by The Liberty Coalition and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
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The same DHS report criticized the Nakamoto Group, finding that the company’s inspections “do not fully examine actual conditions or identify all compliance deficiencies” and that its inspectors “are not always thorough.” Independent investigations have come to similar conclusions. Scott Shuchart, who spent eight years at DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, told the Project on Government Oversight, “Nakamoto has no credibility because of the volume of problems it has failed to uncover at multiple facilities over multiple years…It is a checklist driven, superficial inspection process.” In light of the company’s track record of underreporting deficiencies, the Bossier inspection report is all the more striking.
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Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-WY) this week introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen federal financial management by updating the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990. The CFO Act created a new foundation for federal financial management and established a fiscal management reporting and leadership structure.
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A Pentagon watchdog and retired US Marine Corps (USMC) captain criticised the USAF for again trying to reduce its A-10 fleet. Dan Grazier, military fellow with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) watchdog group in Washington, DC, told Jane’s on 11 February that despite Congress repeatedly affirming its support for the A-10 and an effective CAS capability, USAF leaders have apparently convinced the President Donald Trump administration to allow them to press forward with their long-held desire to sunset, or gradually retire, the fleet.
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Signatories on the letter say there’s no reason for the Democrats to conceal this information.
“There is no good reason to keep the caucus rules secret,” said Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy for the Project on Government Oversight. “I can’t fathom why they haven’t been published already.”
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“It’s unacceptable that the agency is taking such a light-handed approach in holding these large audit firms accountable,” Danielle Brian, POGO's executive director, said in a press release at the time. “By failing to hold the Big Four accountable, the board is putting all Americans’ financial futures in jeopardy.”
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The abuse of this exemption may have peaked in 2013, when federal agencies used it more than 81,000 times. But things haven't necessarily improved in the last seven years. In 2018, (b)5 was still cited more than 60,000 times. The (otherwise considerable) drop in deployment may be due to 2016 legislation, as the Project on Government Oversight explains:
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A primer from the Project On Government Oversight and Demand Progress offers a comprehensive resource on the limitations to congressional staff overseeing classified programs.
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They already have lenses with powerful zoom lenses — but pair them with facial recognition technology or equip them with license plate readers, microphones and possibly the scariest drone technology — Active Track, which can affix on an individual and track them autonomously — and we're on our way in a hurry to living in a surveillance state, according to the Project on Government Oversight.
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