**Written by Doug Powers
Rest easy, America, because the “watchdogs” are now on the job:
Former Obama administration staffers have launched an organization to closely monitor President Donald Trump and his administration.
Known as American Oversight, the group will search for anything that seems amiss, whether it touches on ethics or fraud, among other potential problems, the group’s executive director, Austin Evers, told Fox News.
“We are conducting oversight because Congress won’t,” said Evers, who was a State Department lawyer in the Obama administration. “We are using tools available to American citizens to investigate instances of fraud, corruption, violation of ethics rules, you name it. If there’s something that Congress should be investigating, we will be.”
Evers founded the group with Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who worked for Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Joe Biden when he was a senator. The group’s website notes that Ms. Magazine once called Sloan “the most feared woman in Washington.”
Sloan and Evers also brought in three more attorneys.
John Bies’s work for the Obama administration included serving as counselor to former Attorney General Eric Holder. Cerissa Cafasso’s work for the administration included being counsel in the Department of Labor. Sara Kaiser Creighton worked for private law firms, and clerked for federal judges.
The group stresses that it is nonpartisan, despite the Obama affiliation of some of its top officers. Evers said that American Oversight will hold government officials and career staffers accountable, regardless of party affiliation.
[…]
The group declined to disclose its donors.
Those people really have “nonpartisan government watchdogs” written all over them, don’t they?
Yep, their watchdog experience is unparalleled, especially when it comes to transparency:
The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government.
For a second consecutive year, the Obama administration set a record for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page of files that were requested.
And it set records for outright denial of access to files, refusing to quickly consider requests described as especially newsworthy, and forcing people to pay for records who had asked the government to waive search and copy fees.
Maybe the former State Department lawyer should kick off the new “nonpartisan” watchdog organization by tracking down the $6 billion unaccounted for on Hillary’s watch before watchdogging anybody else.
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
