Tag: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Watchdog group sues DOJ for records to determine if Erik Prince probe was ‘influenced’ by ‘officials seeking to accommodate’ Trump

AlterNet Logo

A government watchdog organization on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that the federal executive department violated the government’s public records law and failed to disclose non-exempt documents. 

According to Law & Crime, the documents focused on a probe into whether or not former President Donald Trump and his longtime ally Erik Prince provided false statements during the Russian investigation.

In the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) alleges that “the government had failed to follow the law by not providing responses to its requests for public information concerning the Prince probe and whether it may have been affected by the Blackwater founder’s close ties to the Trump administration.” Continue reading.

Unnamed donors gave large sums to conservative nonprofit that funded Trump allies

Wellspring Committee, a politically active nonprofit organization that funds conservative groups and causes, gave $14.8 million last year to Judicial Crisis Network, which spent millions of dollars backing the Supreme Court nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch, according to tax documents. Credit: Andrew Harnik, AP

Four unidentified donors gave nearly $17 million last year to a conservative nonprofit group that distributed funds to organizations that backed President Trump’s inaugural committee and his Supreme Court nominees Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, according to tax documents.

Wellspring Committee, a politically active organization that funds conservative causes and groups, received $16.7 million in 2017 from four unnamed donors who gave between $250,000 and $8.9 million each, according to the group’s 2017 tax return, obtained by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington.

During the same period of time, the Northern Virginia-based group gave $14.8 million to another politically active nonprofit organization: the conservative Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), which spent millions of dollars backing the nominations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

View the complete November 27 article by Michelle Ye Hee Lee on The Washington Post website here.