Free Republic

The Department of Justice has granted U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar an ethics waiver, permitting the former Harvard professor to support race-based admissions in a Supreme Court case involving Harvard University. Prelogar, who taught at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2020, was nominated for Solicitor General in August 2021 and confirmed by the Senate that October. Under the Biden Ethics Pledge, Prelogar was prohibited from working on a court case relating to her former employer until two years after her appointment. But the ethics waiver releases her to argue the case before the Supreme Court. Protect the People’s...

Four prosecutors from the Justice Department (DOJ) have withdrawn from their roles in the Roger Stone case, following the department’s decision to reduce the amount of prison time they are recommending for the Trump associate. Prosecutors Aaron Zelinsky (pdf), Jonathan Kravis (pdf), Adam C. Jed (pdf), and Michael Marando (pdf) filed notices withdrawing from the case on Feb. 11. The move follows the department’s decision to override the sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years made by the federal prosecutors. Along with withdrawing from the case, Kravis also will resign from his position as an assistant U.S. attorney. Zelinsky and...

Andrew Slavitt, a former executive at the technology company tasked with saving HealthCare.gov and current second-in-command at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was granted an ethics waiver by the Department of Health and Human Services to begin working with his former company immediately.The waiver was granted despite Republican lawmakers’ concerns about Slavitt’s potential conflict of interest. The Daily Signal revealed those concerns in a story yesterday.Slavitt, a former OptumInsight/QSSI group vice president, left the company last month to work as the principal deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Obamacare and HealthCare.gov. His...

An organization that investigates and fights government corruption announced this week that it obtained records detailing costs associated with a trip made by President and Mrs. Obama and key members of the administration to Copenhagen, Denmark, for the expressed purpose of securing the 2016 Olympics for the city of Chicago. Expenses for the two-week trip appear to have far exceeded $467,175, in light of the fact that costs associated with the aircrafts ? two Boeing 747s and several Air Force cargo planes – have not been made available. According to the records obtained from the Obama Department of Defense (DOD),...