US Senator and presumed presidential hopeful Kamala Harris had nothing but obfuscation and evasion to offer when questioned about a recent Intercept story revealing that as CA Attorney General, Harris’ office ignored an internal memo telling of widespread foreclosure abuse and illegality by then-CEO, now-Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank, recommending further investigation and likely charges, and instead abruptly ended the the investigation into the powerful bank.
Harris did acknowledge the Intercept report was at least in part true, but did not show any remorse or offer any kind of defense, simply stating:
“It’s a decision my office made,”
...
“We went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it’s a decision my office made,” Harris said. “We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us.”
This has been reported masterfully by once-upon-a-time Kossack David Dayen (@ddayen on twitter, dday here at daily kos) who broke the story in January 2017 and has published this extremely troubling follow up. Senator Harris might not have taken part in any wrongdoing, but her non-answers suggest otherwise. He goes on:
Mnuchin is Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, and served as CEO of OneWest from 2009 to 2015. In an internal memo published on Tuesday by The Intercept, prosecutors at the California attorney general’s office said they had found over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by his bank during that time, and predicted that further investigation would uncover many thousands more.
But the investigation into what the memo called “widespread misconduct” was closed after Harris’s office declined to file a civil enforcement action against the bank.
Harris’s statement on Tuesday doesn’t explain how involved she was with the decision to not prosecute, or why the decision was made. She also would not say whether the revelations would disqualify Mnuchin for the position of treasury secretary. “The hearings will reveal if it’s disqualifying or not, but certainly he has a history that should be critically examined, as do all of the nominees,” Harris told The Hill. She added that she would review the background and history of all Trump cabinet nominees.
(Emphasis mine).
Look, I publish this not to start a pie fight but to put pressure on Senator Harris to reveal her part in Mnuchin’s bank being let off the hook, because he is a bad man and she is supposedly a leader of the #Resistance. The answer should have been that Mnuchin is unfit to lead, bar none, and the fact that she couldn’t say so is especially troubling. This is why we need a candidate in 2020 with more than an extremely recent history of progressivism. Because once they’re in office, they’re going to need to LEAD us out of the mess of corporate corruption that our institutions are getting further and further ensconced in.