{"id":480202,"date":"2010-03-27T10:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-27T14:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.opensecrets.org,2010:\/news\/\/8.1445"},"modified":"2010-03-27T10:44:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-27T14:44:04","slug":"revolving-door-shuts-on-barack-obamas-tsa-nominee-robert-harding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/480202","title":{"rendered":"Revolving Door Shuts on Barack Obama’s TSA Nominee Robert Harding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robertharding.jpg\"<\/a>Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding<\/a>, President Barack Obama’s second nominee to lead<\/a> the Transportation Security Administration withdrew his name from consideration Friday, citing “distractions” from his previous work running a private contracting firm that both lobbied and did business with the federal government.<\/p>\n

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Harding had taken multiple trips through the revolving door between private industry and government work.<\/div>\n
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His former company, Harding Security and Associates, spent $10,000 lobbying<\/a> the federal government in 2005, the Center for Responsive Politics<\/a>‘ research indicates. Harding also had close political ties<\/a> to Obama and Democrats, serving on Obama’s presidential transition team<\/a> and making various campaign donations, the Center finds.<\/div>\n
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Questions about government contracts Harding’s firm received in 2004 also proved particularly problematic for him, reports<\/a> Politico<\/i>‘s Kasie Hunt.    <\/p>\n
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“I feel that the distractions caused by my work as a defense contractor would not be good for this administration, nor for the Department of Homeland Security,” Harding wrote in a statement Friday night.<\/div>\n
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Harding’s abrupt withdrawal — he testified<\/a> before a Senate committee about his nomination just this week — marks the second time that an Obama nominee to the TSA’s top job backed out<\/a>. In January, former FBI official Erroll Southers withdrew himself from consideration after some congressional members accused him of providing them misleading information<\/a> about his past.  <\/div>\n
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“The president is disappointed in this outcome but remains confident in the solid team of professionals at TSA,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement.<\/div>\n
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In nominating Harding earlier this month, Obama said in a statement<\/a> that he could “think of no one more qualified than Bob to take on this important job.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding, President Barack Obama’s second nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration withdrew his name from consideration Friday, citing “distractions” from his previous work running a private contracting firm that both lobbied and did business with the federal government. Harding had taken multiple trips through the revolving door between private […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3994,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3994"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}