Sen. Elizabeth Warren had a burning question for Donald Trump's Treasury Department pick in advance of his confirmation hearing.
"At [Thursday's] hearing, he will have the opportunity to explain why his years of grinding families into the dirt at OneWest Bank does not disqualify him from becoming the nation's top economic official."
That's why prior to Steve Mnuchin's appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, Warren assembled a four-person panel of women Wednesday who had been victims of foreclosure by OneWest while Mnuchin was running the bank. Warren originally requested they be included in the hearing but said Republicans declined to do so. Russ Choma writes:
Cristina Clifford, a California acupuncturist, told the panel that her business began to falter in 2009 and she struggled to make her mortgage payments to IndyMac. Clifford said the bank told her that she didn't qualify for a mortgage adjustment because she had always made her payments on time. She said she stopped doing so, on the bank's recommendation. But by the time she was approved for a mortgage modification and submitted the paperwork, the bank was under Mnuchin's control. It cashed the check she sent with the paperwork, she said, but insisted it never received her application. This happened twice, Clifford said, and eventually the house was sold by the bank, even as she says her lawyer was attempting to work with OneWest to avoid a foreclosure.
"It was OneWest that saw a chance to make money," Clifford told Mother Jones. "They could've kept me in the house and worked with me, or they could've sold the house and made a couple extra thousand dollars."
Clifford's story reflects a pattern that many victims of OneWest have relayed: They tried to work with the bank to make modifications to their loans, but ultimately their home was snatched out from under them, often without any warning. As Warren tweeted regarding Mnuchin failing to disclose $100 million in personal assets:
In fact, Mnuchin foreclosed on one 90-year-old woman, Ossie Lofton, for underpaying her mortgage by 27 cents.
After confusion over insurance coverage, a OneWest subsidiary sent Lofton a bill for $423.30. She sent a check for $423. The bank sent another bill, for 30 cents. Lofton, 90, sent a check for 3 cents. In November 2014, the bank foreclosed.
Mnuchin said during Thursday’s hearing that his own disclosure failure was simply a matter of confusion, not malice, on his part.
“Let me just be clear again: I did not use a Cayman Islands entity in any way to avoid paying taxes for myself,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “I would love to work with the I.R.S. to close these tax issues that make no sense.”
It’s not clear that working with others to solve financial issues ranks among his strengths.