With Elana Kagan seeming to be at the top of President Obama's short list for the Supreme Court seat now vacated by Justice Stevens, a story that broke in March 2009 has resurfaced.
On Friday, a slew of inquiries was made to the White House and Justice Department about a minor post Solicitor General Elena Kagan once held at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank under fire over controversial mortgage securities transactions. Kagan served on a Goldman advisory council between 2005 and 2008, with the task of providing expert "analysis and advice to Goldman Sachs and its clients." For her work she earned a $10,000 stipend.
This was actually old news. Kagan disclosed this information during her first confirmation hearings for the post of Solicitor General. On March 24, 2009, the New York Times mentioned the position and payment in an article on whether White House employees should be allowed to keep the bonuses they earned from their time in private industry....
The Justice Department . . . downplayed the findings in statements issued to inquiring reporters. "This advisory group was comprised of leaders from various sectors including academia, the media, business, and other industry," said spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. "They met once a year for a daylong conference organized around public policy matters. The group was not involved in making any investment decisions for the company."
HuffPo obtained two reports from the advisory group Kagan served on, which discussed "the broad risks that the world economy faced and contain the type of insight expected from a largely formal panel" without going into the larger problem of the U.S. housing credit bubble or the credit default swap house of cards. But as Sam Stein points out in this story, plenty of actual economists missed that, too. There doesn't appear to be a whole lot of "there" there in this story.
However, the fact that it's being dragged out again by various media means that however innocuous Kagan's involvement with Goldman was, it's going to be an issue if she is indeed annouced as Obama's pick on Monday. It's the low-hanging journalistic fruit, since the SEC charged Goldman with fraud last month. And it's a potential issue for Republicans to bring out a populist cudgel against the administration and Kagan in this volatile election year. It's an unfortunate convergence of events for a possible Kagan nomination.
