Matthew Whitaker


Matthew George Whitaker is an American lawyer, politician, and diplomat serving as the 26th United States ambassador to NATO since 2025 in the second administration of President Donald Trump. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served in Trump's first administration as acting United States attorney general from November 2018 to February 2019, following the resignation of Jeff Sessions. Whitaker had previously served as Chief of Staff for Sessions from October 2017 to November 2018.
While attending the University of Iowa, Whitaker played tight end for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes football team, including in the 1991 Rose Bowl.
In 2002, Whitaker was the Republican nominee for Treasurer of Iowa, losing to incumbent Michael Fitzgerald. From 2004 to 2009, he served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, where he was known for aggressively prosecuting drug traffickers. Whitaker ran in the 2014 Iowa Republican primary for the United States Senate. He later wrote opinion pieces and appeared on talk-radio shows and cable news as the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a conservative advocacy group.
On February 15, 2019, after William Barr was sworn in as Attorney General, Whitaker became a senior counselor in the Office of the Associate Attorney General; he resigned from the Justice Department on March 2, 2019. After leaving the Justice Department, Whitaker became a guest on news and analysis shows including as a CNN contributor, and was affiliated with the law firm of Graves Garrett. In August 2019, he became a managing director at Axiom Strategies and Clout Public Affairs.
On November 20, 2024, Whitaker was announced by Donald Trump as the nominee to serve as the United States ambassador to NATO in the second Trump administration. He was confirmed by the Senate on April 1, 2025, by a vote of 52–45, and was sworn in two days later.

Early life, education, and college football career

Matthew George Whitaker was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on October 29, 1969. He graduated from Ankeny High School, where he was a football star. He was inducted into the Iowa High School Football Hall of Fame in 2009. Whitaker attended the University of Iowa, receiving a bachelor's degree in communications in 1991 and Master of Business Administration and Juris Doctor degrees from the Tippie College of Business & the University of Iowa College of Law in 1995.
As an undergraduate between 1990 and 1992, Whitaker was the backup tight end for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes football team under coach Hayden Fry, including the 1991 Rose Bowl, a Hawkeyes loss to the Washington Huskies. Whitaker played in 33 games, including two bowl games, and made 21 receptions for a total of 203 yards, scoring two touchdowns. In 1993, he received the Big Ten Medal of Honor for proficiency in scholarship and athletics awarded each year to one male and one female student-athlete at each Big Ten Conference school. Whitaker graduated from college in three-and-a-half years, and played his last season of football while attending law school. He was GTE's 1992 GTE District VII Academic All-District selection.

Career

After graduating from law school, Whitaker lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from 1995 to 2001, before moving back to Iowa.

Private practice and business and political activities (1995–2004)

Whitaker worked for a number of regional law firms, including Briggs & Morgan and Finley Alt Smith, and he was corporate counsel for national grocery store chain SuperValu in Minneapolis. He also owned or co-owned a trailer manufacturing company from 2002 to 2005 and a day-care center from 2003 to 2015. In 2003, Whitaker and a partner co-founded Buy the Yard Concrete, based at Whitaker's home in Urbandale, Iowa.
Whitaker ran as a Republican for Treasurer of Iowa in 2002, losing to incumbent Democrat Michael Fitzgerald by 55% to 43%.

United States Attorney

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley recommended Whitaker as one of three attorneys suggested to President George W. Bush for the position of United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa. In February 2004, Bush nominated Whitaker to the position. Senate Democrats objecting to Bush nominees held up the nomination for four months before Whitaker was confirmed on June 15, 2004.
In his first year in office, Whitaker issued a record 500 indictments, more than half of which were drug prosecutions, mainly related to trafficking of methamphetamine. In July 2005, Whitaker joined neighboring U.S. Attorneys Michael Heavican of Nebraska and Charles Larson Sr. of northern Iowa, in issuing a warning that persons crossing state lines to obtain pseudoephedrine, a methamphetamine ingredient, could be prosecuted in federal court. As U.S. Attorney, Whitaker sought stringent sentences for individuals charged with drug crimes. One case involved a woman who had two prior nonviolent drug convictions and was informed by Whitaker's office that, as a third-time offender, her sentence could be enhanced to a mandatory life sentence unless she agreed to a plea deal of 21 to 27 years in prison. She agreed to the plea bargain. Obama commuted her sentence after she had served 11 years in prison.
Whitaker also served on a regional anti-terrorism task force, which examined both international and domestic threats, and focused on prosecuting child pornography and violent crimes against children. From 2005 to 2007, Whitaker's office, together with the FBI, investigated and unsuccessfully prosecuted Iowa State Senator Matt McCoy on charges of attempting to extort $2,000. A columnist for The Des Moines Register said that the case was based on "the word of a man former associates depicted as a drug user, a deadbeat and an abuser of women; a man so shady even his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsors called him 'a pathological liar.'" The jury reached a verdict of not guilty within two hours. In 2007, Whitaker also led the investigation of four executives of the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium, a Des Moines-based job training agency, who were accused of collectively stealing more than $2 million from the agency over a three-year period. The alleged ringleader, CIETC CEO Ramona Cunningham, pleaded guilty on June 30, 2008.
Whitaker resigned in November 2009 following the Senate confirmation of his replacement, Nicholas A. Klinefeldt, who was nominated by President Obama.

Private practice and business and political activities (2009–2017)

From 2009 to 2017, Whitaker was a managing partner of the small general practice law firm Whitaker Hagenow & Gustoff LLP in Des Moines.
In 2011, Whitaker applied for an appointment to the Iowa Supreme Court but was not among the finalists whose names were submitted to the governor for selection for one of the three open seats.
In 2011, he co-founded Whitaker Strategy Group, a lobbying and consulting firm.
In 2012, Whitaker and two partners invested, under a venture named MEM Investment, in the purchase and development of an affordable-housing apartment building in Des Moines. In 2014, Whitaker's partners left this partnership, and by spring of 2016, after years of rising costs, the building was sold as part of an exit agreement.
Whitaker was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2014 United States Senate election in Iowa. He came in fourth in the Republican primary, with 11,909 votes. Whitaker then chaired the campaign of Sam Clovis for Iowa State Treasurer. Clovis lost in the November 2014 general election.

World Patent Marketing

From 2014 to 2017, Whitaker served on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing, a Florida-based company billed as an invention promotion firm. According to an FBI investigation, the advisory board members never met. In a 2014 statement Whitaker publicly vouched for WPM, claiming they went "beyond making statements about doing business 'ethically' and translate those words into action". The company contributed to Whitaker's 2014 U.S. Senate campaign, and over the three-year period from 2014 and 2017 paid Whitaker less than $17,000 for work performed. Some customers accused the company of using Whitaker's background as a U.S. Attorney to threaten them. In one 2015 email mentioning his background as a former federal prosecutor, Whitaker told a customer that filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or "smearing" the company online could result in "serious civil and criminal consequences". The owner of Ripoff Report told The Wall Street Journal that Whitaker had called him in 2015 demanding his website take down negative reports about WPM, alleging, "He threatened to ruin my business if I didn't remove the reports. He would have the government shut me down under some homeland security law".
The company was later determined to have engaged in deceptive practices. In 2017, FTC investigators examined whether Whitaker had played any role in making threats of legal action to silence the company's critics. Whitaker rebuffed an FTC subpoena for records in October 2017, shortly after he had joined the Department of Justice. After Whitaker's appointment in the Department of Justice in September 2017, White House and senior Justice Department officials were reportedly surprised to learn of Whitaker's connection to the company. A spokesperson for Whitaker said that he was not aware of the company's fraud, and the court receiver in the case, Jonathan Perlman, stated he had "no reason to believe that knew of any of the wrongdoing."

Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust

From October 2014 to September 2017, Whitaker was the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust ; he was the organization's only full-time employee in 2015 and 2016. FACT, founded in late 2014, is a conservative nonprofit organization specializing in legal and ethical issues related to politics. The group was backed by $1 million in seed money from conservative donors. According to the organization's first tax return, its funding – $600,000 in 2014 – came from a conservative donor-advised fund called Donors Trust. From its creation in 2014 through 2018, FACT reported contributions of $3.5 million on its tax filings. Whitaker earned $1.2 million from the group over four years.
While Whitaker was the head of FACT, the organization had a special focus on the Hillary Clinton email controversy and perceived favoritism in the business dealings of Clinton. The organization called for ethics investigations into or filed complaints for more than 40 different Democratic politicians, officials, and organizations, compared to only a few Republicans. During his time at FACT, Whitaker wrote opinion pieces that appeared in USA Today and the Washington Examiner, and he appeared regularly on conservative talk-radio shows and cable news.