Posted on 04/20/2010 3:52:31 PM PDT by BP2
Congressman Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, is initiating an investigation into the timing of the Security and Exchange Commission's fraud suit against Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs.
"The events of the past five days have fueled legitimate suspicion on the part of the American people that the Commission has attempted to assist the White House, the Democratic Party, and Congressional Democrats by timing this suit to coincide with the Senate's consideration of financial regulatory legislation," Issa says.
Issa's staff tells CBS News that they currently have no hard evidence that the SEC violated federal law by colluding with the White House. But they argue the timeline and the circumstances are fishy, and they point to two things in particular: the announcement of the fraud suit the week before Democrats planned to bring their financial reform bill to the Senate floor, and the amazing speed with which Organizing for America managed to purchase a Google ad directing people who typed "Goldman Sachs SEC" on Google to donate money at my.barackobama.com once the news broke on the New York Times website.
Issa's office is not going so far as to make an accusation of impropriety at this point. But they are requesting a raft of documents from the SEC - including "all known communications" between SEC employees and the Executive Office of the President, the Democratic National Committee, the DNC group Organizing for America, or the New York Times. They say if they don't get the documents they want from the SEC, there are "many avenues to pursue," including subpoenas.
This morning, CBS News caught up with SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro as she was departing a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy. We asked her if there was any political pressure put on the SEC to bring this suit against Goldman Sachs.
Her response, as she walked away: "Absolutely not."
They must have the goods on Obama to be this forceful at this point.
If so, it'll be interesting to see if the Dems running for re-election will stand by their man ... or run for the hills.
I can’t wait until we take over congress, the congressional hearings will be great TV.
Goldman Sachs has hired former White House counsel, Greg Craig, to advise it on litigation regarding the SEC suit.
They need to pound Obama on this just like the Dems did with Enron. This is bigger than Enron and the Democrats are counting on the Republicans going soft and taking a beating as they try to take the money and eat their wallstreet cake too. I’ve heard that by some estimates this bill will cost as much as 1/2 a trillion dollars to implement. Even Dem congressmen have said it would allow for unlimited bailouts. The RNC needs to run radio and TV ads. Hit Obama on his posturing. Play his blaming the Republicans and then play how much money he received from Wallstreet then post the white house phone number so people can tell the President to stop posturing and just get give the money back.
I just heard some cowardly Fox News commentators suggesting Republicans should just let this one go. Where do they not get the simple message that We the People have been sending them? We want them to stop this mad infantile third world style President. We don’t want them jumping on the bandwagon and pulling his arrogant flesh out of the fire.
Her response, as she walked away: "Absolutely not."
That is because they did not need any political pressure.
There is definitely a lot of smoke so maybe a hot fire is burning. Obama getting a million dollars from Sachs is enough in its own right to say we have a problem here.
I agree the hearings will be great. But -what can He do now?
The communications director of the DNC indicated yesterday that these ads had been in place at least two weeks.
[Brad Woodhouse, the DNC communications director, told POLITICO: “We have all kinds of online advertising up to allow folks who are searching and reading online to get involved with Organizing for American and the president and make a difference on his agenda. We've been running online ads since early last year. We watch closely what terms folks are searching and set up our ads accordingly.” . . .Woodhouse said the ad is part of an online campaign that began about two weeks ago , and has included such Google search terms as “Goldman,” “Wall Street” and “Bank of America.”]
Now THAT is good news! (Has Obama returned all those campaign donations from Goldman Sachs yet?)
“They need to pound Obama on this just like the Dems did with Enron.”
***
1000% correct.
This needs to be shouted from the mountaintops, as Mark Levin did on his show tonite!
Make this stick and then lower the boom.
American Revolution 2.0 has started.
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> They need to pound Obama on this just like the Dems did with Enron. The American public occasionally gets “confused” about complex issues involving Wall Street. This one is easy, especially with the current polling on Obama and the Dems.
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This is GOOD! Glad to see the spine...............finally!
That’s not true. The SEC brings civil actions all the time, without Justice involvement.
Anything he damn well pleases.
Getting to the bottom of why the Obama administration is taking on Goldman and taking them on now is not a winning issue for Republicans.
I was listening to Mark. He did as usual a great job.
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