With six months tenure in the US Senate, Kamala Harris is already a standout. She takes her committee assignments seriously and she’s sharp, informed, and professional at hearings.
Jeff Sessions came apart when Senator Harris questioned him at an Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election. He tried to avoid giving her any answers and ended up telling more than she asked, when he lost his temper and blurted out, "I’m not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous.”
Right-wingers have a built-in bias against Democrats like Harris, a woman, of color, from California. She may have opponents among Progressives, inside and outside the Democratic party, too.
This morning on MSNBC’s AM Joy, Howard Dean spoke about Harris who may run in 2020. He warned about the potential for Democrats to be divided along the way. An effort to tarnish Harris’s reputation has already begun with propaganda that puts her on the wrong side of Progressive issues.
The story appeared most recently in The Week but the original version, in The Intercept, came out in January. It’s propaganda that sounds a bit too contrived to be believed, depending on the reader. Some who look for bias confirmation would take it at face value.
After the events of the last year, it would be wise for readers to be cautious about jumping on a bandwagon like this. It’s elements include a bank owned by Steve Mnuchin, misconduct related to foreclosures, and a California Attorney General, Kamala Harris who didn’t prosecute.
A 26-page internal memo is supposed to authenticate the story but it doesn’t. Readers would have to read and understand it to know that,
The memo, sent by four Deputies to Senior Assistant AGs asks for authorization to take civil enforcement action against Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank.
It narrates OneWest's history pointing out two notable events:
- OneWest began when it acquired all assets of IndyMac, a bank that failed, from the FDIC. It was one of the largest bank failures in US history when it went into receivership in July 2008. The FDIC determined that a viable bank could be salvaged from the wreckage and sold to OneWest in February 2009.
- Because of its misconduct, OneWest had signed a consent order with a federal agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, in 2011.
A consent order is a legally binding enforcement action. The OTS was already addressing the issues noted in the memo. However, a consent order doesn't go to court during the period when it is in effect. The memo was asking for a civil suit in state court which would have been a different process.
The memo spells out explicitly the pros and cons of going to court, or not.
- The consent order was already had already been in effect for two years at the time of the memo.
- Under the consent order, the federal government was exercising new authorities that it had pursuant to Dodd-Frank. Another federal agency, the FDIC was also a stakeholder.
- Civil enforcement in California would have been duplicative.
- The outcome of a civil suit was unknown. The court could have reached a decision that was different from the federal action and it could have even decided in the bank's favor.
- Under the consent decree, the bank agreed to follow all federal requirements until its obligations were satisfied, or cease and desist from doing business.
Here’s a partial list of the Cons that appear throughout the memo:
in 2014, the OTS was integrated with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which inherited responsibility for the consent order. It remained in effect until it was terminated in 2015.
Under the consent order, Sheila Bair launched the bank's loan modification program. Bair is known for her early, unheeded warnings about Too Big To Fail. A large proportion of foreclosures weren’t eligible for modification because they involved reverse mortgages that were initiated by the predecessor bank, IndyMac.
There's a lot that could have been done differently. But that’s not the focus of the propaganda attack on Harris. ‘The intercept’ doesn’t mention the consent order at all. [See Update below for Correction. ‘The Intercept' mentioned the consent order in its January 3 article but not in its January 5 article.] It’s story isn’t truthful about the internal memo it cited and linked.
Look at the first page.
A caption across the top says:
“Case NOT filed despite strong recommendations.”
It was stamped “Confidential” in red ink.
This page couldn’t have been part of the original memo dated January 18, 2013, which begins on page 3. If it was added to the memo by the California Attorney General’s office, it should be dated and initialed for recordkeeping.
The recommendations were ambivalent, not strong.
Was it added by ‘The Intercept’ to reinforce their untruthful story?
It makes the document look like it was falsified.
Here’s a link to the original consent order signed in 2011.
www.occ.gov/…
Monday, Aug 7, 2017 · 2:18:21 AM +00:00 · Mark Lippman
A reader noted that ‘The Intercept’ did mention the consent order signed by OneWest and asked for a correction.
‘The Intercept’ ran two versions of the story on January 3 & January 5. I used both versions in the research for this story. While the consent order wasn’t mentioned in the January 5 version, I failed to notice that it was mentioned in the January 3 version.