Government Accountability Institute argues that the
Obama administration’s decision to not go after Big Finance is due to senior
DOJ leadership — Holder, Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, Associate
Attorney General Tony West, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Deputy
Attorney General James Cole and Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason —
who “all came to the DOJ from prestigious white-collar defense firms where they
represented the very financial institutions the DOJ is supposed to
investigate.”
The report details how Holder and Breuer both came to
the DOJ from Covington & Burling, a “top-tier Washington law firm” with a
client list that includes financial firms like Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase,
Bank of America, CitiBank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, ING, Morgan Stanley,
UBS and Wilmington Trust.
GAI said that President Obama’s decision to choose
Holder, “a white-collar defense attorney from Covington,” as his attorney
general, over a “more fiery prosecutor,” appears to have sent “a subtle signal
to the financial community” that this administration isn’t going to actually do
anything, despite the harsh words.
As one of many examples of where Holder’s DOJ could
have gone after Wall Street but failed, GAI cites how Michigan Democratic Sen.
Carl Levin “proposed that the DOJ criminally investigate Goldman Sachs for its
handling of the Abacus 2007-AC1 transaction” in an April 2011 Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations report.
In that 635-page report, Levin and his staff — who
are
Democrats — recommended that Holder’s DOJ investigate potential crimes
committed. Levin’s subcommittee and the
Federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission both made formal referrals to the
DOJ for investigation – and Forbes magazine ran an article with the headline,
“Criminal Charges Loom for Goldman Sachs After Scathing Report.”
Nothing happened.
But, over the course of the rest of 2011, Obama went on a massive fundraising
drive down Wall Street. “By the fall of
2011, Obama had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the
Republican candidates, and employees at Bain Capital had donated more than
twice as much to Obama as they did to [Mitt] Romney, the firm’s founder,” GAI
wrote in its report.
“In the weeks before and after the Senate report on
Goldman Sachs, several Goldman executives and their families made contributions
to Obama’s Victory Fund and related entities and some contributors maxed out at
the largest individual donation allowed, $35,800.”
“Five senior Goldman Sachs executives wrote more than
$130,000 in checks to the Obama Victory Fund,” GAI continued. “Two of these
executives had never donated to Obama before and had previously only given small
donations to individual candidates. ---
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