"Accountable.US," is a progressive nonprofit whose mission aims to hold government groups, individuals and their decisions accountable for unethical behavior.
The group especially focuses on "special interests corrupting our government," according to its website.
Most recently, Accountable.US set its sights on Trump-appointed Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.
The watchdog group has alleged that DeVos was involved in her brother's 2017 attempts to infiltrate and spy on a Michigan teachers union. The group has called on Congress to conduct further investigation into the scheme with a particular focus on DeVos' involvement.
The new scrutiny aimed at DeVos arises after the New York Times released a report this past weekend detailing DeVos' brother, Erik Prince's various schemes to hire both American and British spies "for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda," according to the news outlet.
One of those operations included taping closed-door meetings of the Michigan teachers union leaders, gathering information and documents that, if published, could damage the union's mission, NYT continued.
Prince is a well-known security contractor with plenty of ties to conservative causes. He is most notably the founder and former head of "Blackwater Worldwide," a private mercenary firm that killed Iraqi civilians when the U.S. Government hired the outfit.
Erik Prince
Mark Wilson via Getty Images
As for how Betsy DeVos is implicated, Accountable.US released a letter to several press outlets, including Huffpost, detailing the grounds of its speculation.
"The involvement of DeVos' brother in this scheme to spy on a labor organization in their shared home state of Michigan raises serious questions about what role the Education Secretary played in it, particularly in light of DeVos' history of hostility with the same union."
"It stretches the imagination to the breaking point to believe her brother never at least mentioned his intel operation to her."
"At the end of the day, who would benefit more from this ill-gotten information than the Education Secretary at war with the union?"
Although DeVos' involvement is still confined to the realm of conjecture, Twitter had zero trouble wrapping its head around the idea.
Thus Congress has not commented on whether or not it will conduct the further investigation that the watchdog group has called for.
@petebuttigieg.bsky.social
