And while Dodd has recently said that he was unaware of any special treatment, Feinberg told Congressional investigators that Dodd (as well as North Dakota’s Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad) was told “who you know is basically how you’re coming in here.”
The House committee staff report concludes, “Senior Countrywide officials and lobbyists openly and explicitly weighed the value of relationships with potentially influential borrowers against the cost to Countrywide in terms of forfeited fees and payments.” To put a finer point on it, the report shows an e-mail from a Countrywide Managing Director who says, “I’m usually in favor of settling on the side of the borrower with political influence.”
Bank of America has said that the bank has relevant Countrywide VIP documents and is ready to provide them to a Congressional committee if the committee will simply subpoena them. However, both House and Senate Democrats have so far refused to issue the subpoena.
Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, offered HUMAN EVENTS these thoughts:
“We’ve been working for more than a year on this investigation. It’s not about one particular lawmaker or targeting lawmakers. It’s about uncovering a scheme which targeted lawmakers for the purposes of affecting public policy. The guilt or innocence of Senators Dodd or Conrad is not for us to say, and it’s not the focus of our investigation. You would think, however, knowing these documents do exist, that they would be among the first to want them to be released so that they can clear their names. We have at our disposal the ability to uncover the full scope of this program. For reasons I cannot explain, Democratic leaders in Congress refuse to get the proof that can answer all these questions — proof which is literally one subpoena away.”
Dodd’s dalliances with Countrywide were not his first stroke of good luck in real estate. In 1994, he also got a sweetheart deal buying an Irish cottage from Edward Downe, Jr., a friend of Dodd’s who had pled guilty to felony securities fraud and insider trading charges. Dodd’s cottage more than tripled in value in a few years. But Downe was probably not too upset about not owning such a rapidly appreciating asset because in 2001 Dodd bypassed the usual Justice Department procedures, going directly to then-President Bill Clinton, who, on his last day in office, gave Downe a full pardon.
As if these two examples weren’t enough to prove Dodd’s lack of fitness for his job, we also have his involvement in putting protection for the infamous AIG bonus payments in an amendment to the so-called “stimulus bill.”
On a Tuesday in March, as the Chicago Tribune noted, “Dodd had said he was not a member of the conference committee that crafted the compromise bill and said the exception had not been in the bill as he drafted it. But late Wednesday, Dodd admitted he had been involved in the change.” The bonuses, which included $165 million to the financial products unit which was primarily responsible for the company’s collapse, may have been protected by law in any case. But Dodd’s actions ensured they would be paid — with taxpayer money.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33003
That figures, Reid and the Good Ole Boys covering for the crooks.
Thanks for the post.