Obama transition adviser undermined Fannie Mae oversight as lobbyist (Anyone surprised?)

Thomas Donilon, named by Barack Obama as an adviser to his transition team, oversaw lobbyist efforts to undermine OFHEO’s regulatory efforts over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ABC News reports on Donilon’s history and his participation in painting a much rosier picture than reality provided for Fannie Mae’s board. The Obama rebuttal will sound familiar to those who recall Jim Johnson’s involvement with Obama’s campaign: One of Obama’s top transition team members, Thomas Donilon, oversaw an aggressive, backdoor lobbying campaign by mortgage giant Fannie Mae to undermine the credibility of a probe into the firm’s accounting irregularities, according to a 2006 government report on the company. The effort — which reportedly included attacks on the funding for the oversight agency, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and an attempt to launch a separate investigation into OFHEO itself — was ultimately unsuccessful, and regulators eventually discovered top Fannie Mae executives had been manipulating the company’s financial reporting to maximize their bonuses

More on Donilon, see this thread for research:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2604341/posts

A few highlights ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21138-2004Dec22.html

Raines’s total compensation in 2002 was $17.7 million. That year, 19 other top Fannie Mae executives were paid more than $1 million, 12 more than $2 million and nine more than $3 million, according to materials released at a hearing this fall by Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.), chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Fannie Mae. Baker is a leading critic of the District-based mortgage finance company.

Among the Fannie Mae officials on Baker’s list was Thomas E. Donilon, the company’s executive vice president — law and policy, who was assistant secretary of state for public affairs and chief of staff to Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the Clinton administration. Donilon received $4.3 million.

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Fannie , Freddie in the Political Spotlight
Washington Post - Monday, July 31, 2000
Author: Jerry Knight, Washington Post Staff Writer

Ordinarily when Fannie Mae announces its quarterly earnings, chief financial officer Timothy Howard has a conference call with analysts and talks for the better part of an hour about the numbers that drive the performance of Washington’s biggest business.

Interest rate trends; comprehensive net interest margins; what it costs Fannie to borrow money, compared with what it costs the U.S. Treasury; LIBOR rates; T-bill spreads—it adds up to billions of dollars measured off in basis points, each of which is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.

You need an MBA just to understand the lingo and an Excel spreadsheet to make sense of the numbers.

But this month, when Fannie put out its second-quarter financials, the conference call was dominated not by the jargon of Wall Street, but the spin control of Washington. Thomas E. Donilon , Fannie ‘s executive vice president for law and policy, took over the teleconference and made a point of introducing Arne Christenson, senior vice president for regulatory policy. Christenson was, Donilon reminded the Wall Streeters, chief of staff to Newt Gingrich when he was House speaker.

When your chief executive, Franklin Raines, used to be President Clinton’s budget director and your vice chairman, Jamie Gorelick , is Clinton’s former deputy attorney general, it’s important for the politically naive numbers nerds on Wall Street to understand that you have a balanced offense. Because from that point on in the call, it was pure politics.

“We manage our political risk with the same intensity we manage our other risks,” proclaimed Donilon , assuring investors they do not have to worry about all the bad things being said in Washington about Fannie Mae .

“It’s political noise and not political risk,” he said.

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View as HTML: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xSUl45vt3xMJ:gsereport.com/2000/July22-Aug18.pdf+Donilon+%22It%27s+political+noise+and+not+political+risk,%22+he+said.&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

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FUN FACT:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52625-2004Sep26?language=printer

Gorelick has told friends that she would seriously consider an offer some day to serve as defense secretary

Fannie Mae Takes New Approach in Crisis
Washington Post, The (DC) - Monday, September 27, 2004
Author: Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and David A. Vise, Washington Post Staff Writers

EXCERPT

Gorelick has told friends that she would seriously consider an offer some day to serve as defense secretary ...

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57900-2005Apr15.html

Fannie Mae ‘s Top Lawyer To Quit, Join Old Firm - Donilon Oversaw Relations With Regulators, Congress
Washington Post, The (DC) - Saturday, April 16, 2005
Author: Terence O’Hara, Washington Post Staff Writer

EXCERPT

From 2000 to 2003, Donilon received more than $7 million in compensation in the form of cash payments and restricted stock awards. Last year, he was paid his salary — $644,000 — but no bonus.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04disclose.html

Financial Industry Paid Millions to Obama Aide
New York Times, The (NY) - Saturday, April 4, 2009
Author: JEFF ZELENY Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, David Johnston, David D. Kirkpatrick, Eric Lipton and Charlie Savage.

EXCERPT

Thomas E. Donilon , the deputy national security adviser, reported earning $3.9 million as a partner at the Washington law firm O’Melveny & Myers. His disclosure form says major clients included Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Apollo Management, a private equity firm in New York that specializes in distressed assets and corporate restructuring.

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D BUSINESS TIMES MOVERS & SHAKERS
The Washington Times - Monday, June 21, 1999

EXCERPT

FINANCIAL

Thomas Donilon joined Fannie Mae , the District, as senior vice president, general counsel and secretary. Vada Hill and Jaynie Studenmund were appointed senior vice presidents for marketing and for the Western regional office, respectively. Mr. Donilon , a partner with the O’Melveny and Myers law firm, has represented Fannie Mae on legal and regulatory issues since 1990 ...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/21/all_the_presidents_goldman_sachs_men_105251.html

— Obama’s close hometown crony, campaign finance chief and senior adviser Penny Pritzker was head of Superior Bank of Chicago, a subprime specialist that went bust in 2001, leaving more than 1,400 people stripped of their savings after bank officials falsified profit reports. Pritzker’s lawyer at O’Melveny and Myers, Tom Donilon, is now Obama’s deputy national security adviser. He earned just shy of $4 million representing her and other high-profile meltdown clients including Goldman Sachs.

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