[danamco]

Gorelick is not going to be so lucky when the indictments come down in the Fannie Mae investigation.



More information on this matter, please???

[Dems_R_Losers]

Jamie Gorelick was Vice-Chairman and General Counsel of Fannie Mae during the period that is now under federal investigation, when Fannie Mae massively cooked its books in order to hit an earnings target that guaranteed maximum bonuses to its executives. Gorelick received a bonus of nearly a million dollars in 1999 (on top of a salary that was probably in the $500,000 - $750,000 range). Fannie Mae is currently undergoing a massive restatement of earnings back to 1999 as a result, and the restatement may wipe out as much as $20 billion in earnings that were illegally booked. So this is not a small deal. And Jamie Gorelick was the company's chief legal officer and political enforcer when it all happened.

Frank Raines, Fannie Mae CEO and Friend of Bill Clinton, who most people thought was the most bulletproof person in Washington, was eventually fired by Fannie Mae's board when the SEC ruled that Fannie's accounting during this period was bogus, just days after Raines tearfully testified before Congress that Fannie Mae and he had done nothing wrong and suggesting that it was all a partisan witch hunt against him. The CFO was also fired. Gorelick certainly would have been as well, had she still been with the company.

So I think it's close to a lead-pipe cinch she will be indicted on Enron-type charges. And it will then be asked, how did Gorelick get this job in the first place? She knew nothing about mortgage finance or housing, yet was hired as the #2 executive at the biggest housing finance company in the world. (Frank Raines held the #2 job before he was promoted when James Johnson retired.) Many eyebrows were raised in the mortgage industry when she was hired. But she did earn a plum job after carrying the Clintons' water at Defense and Justice, and there were no plummier jobs in Washington in the 90s than at Fannie Mae. Obviously she was good at covering up wrongdoing and managing heavy-duty political operations, so she was tailor-made for Frank Raines.

Fannie Mae was a notorious Democratic political machine in the 80s and 90s, beginning with former CEO James Johnson (Walter Mondale's campaign manager in 1984, also knew nothing about mortgage finance or housing when he arrived at Fannie) and then under Frank Raines. It took an aggressive Bush Administration to uncover the accounting shenanigans. I'm anxious to see if the federal investigation turns up any illegalities involving Fannie with Clinton's reelection or other campaigns.