Matthew Whitaker may own the distinction of being the first acting attorney general in American history to have once earnestly hawked a toilet for men with big dicks, but his various misadventures in the private sector are hardly the least objectionable part of his background. According to the Guardian, in 2011, when an Iowa state supreme court selection panel asked the former U.S. attorney to name a case in which his "personally held beliefs" conflicted with his duties as an "officer of the court or an officer of the country,” Whitaker cited his prosecution of a man who drove his car through the front door of a family planning clinic and then, once inside, tried to set it on fire.

As the Guardian notes, the reference appears to be to the case of one David McMenemy, an anti-choice extremist who spent the summer of 2016 meandering through the Midwest hunting for an abortion clinic to attack with his car. On September 13, he happened upon the Edgerton Women’s Health Center in Davenport, Iowa. From the Quad City Times:

He entered the center’s driveway off East Rusholme Street and then took a few moments to turn and configure the car to face straight into the lobby, Davenport Fire Marshal Mike Hayman said.

The 45-year-old crashed the Saturn into the central lobby, coming to rest at the counter. When the car did not immediately burst into flames as he may have expected, police said he took gasoline that he had poured into a Gatorade bottle and spread it over the interior. “I lit it,” McMenemy told investigators, and he exited the structure to surrender himself to startled Davenport firefighters.

It was not until after his arrest that McMenemy learned that the Edgerton Women's Health Center does not, in fact, provide abortions.

To the panel, Whitaker stated that his office had gone after McMenemy for an alleged violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances Act, passed in 1994 in response to a spate of abortion clinic bombings. Among other things, the law prohibits protesters from impeding physical access to facilities, and subjects anyone who "intentionally damages or destroys" such facilities to federal prosecution and imprisonment.

It turns out that Whitaker was wrong about the case's resolution; McMenemy pleaded guilty only to an arson charge and received a five-year sentence. Nonetheless, he explained, "That's one clear example where my own personal beliefs may be inconsistent, but I had no problem following the law and enforcing the law." (After receiving an unspecified number of written complaints about Whitaker, the Iowa panel did not make him a finalist for the open seat on the bench.)