White House Chief of Staff Emanuel's corrupt stint as a director at Freddie Mac

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From: Judicial Watch

From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:

Rahm Emanuel's High-Paying, Do-Nothing Tenure at Freddie Mac

March 27, 2009

Tom Fitton

Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is not known as a shrinking violet. He's been described as rude, crude, aggressive, mean-spirited, dogmatic and loquacious. Passive, quiet, inconspicuous? Not so much.

So how is it that Emanuel served on the Board of mortgage lending giant Freddie Mac for 14 months without making any noticeable mark, while at the same time reaping huge financial rewards? And why did the normally obtrusive Emanuel keep his lips zipped when presented with an illegal accounting scheme designed to defraud Freddie Mac investors?

These are questions The Chicago Tribune has been asking lately. And here's what The Tribune found out:

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

"Little effort" may be an understatement. The Freddie Mac board does most of its work in committees. According to the Tribune, there is no documented evidence Emanuel even served on a committee.

But it gets worse.

On Emanuel's watch, Freddie Mac hatched an accounting scheme – reviewed by the board –to defraud investors by artificially inflating the value of the company in order to pay out big bonuses to executives. The company was also slapped with a $3.8 million fine by the Federal Election Commission for using corporate funds to bankroll political fundraisers. In fact, after Emanuel finished his 14-month stint at Freddie, the company held one of these illegal fundraisers on his behalf!

And this is the man we're supposed to trust operating the levers of power at the Obama White House?

Of course, Judicial Watch is trying to dig up as much information as possible on the political corruption that enabled Fannie and Freddie (and their congressional co-conspirators) to operate above the law.

In fact, one Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request relates directly to the political fundraising scheme that resulted in the FEC fine referenced above. On December 18, 2008, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request with the Treasury Department regarding political contributions and political contribution policies at Fannie and Freddie.

We are looking into the deliberate campaign by these two agencies to buy political protection on Capitol Hill (mostly from liberals) so that they could continue on their reckless programs to hustle "subprime" mortgages to unqualified homebuyers.

I'll continue to keep you posted on further developments.

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Obama White House considers engagement in US Census surveys

Pres. Obama speaks with White House Chief of Staff Emanuel. Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Government reform orgs. deliver news on major events within their areas of expertise.
From: Campaign Legal Center

Feb 19, 2009 -- The Hill's Congress Blog

With Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) withdrawing last week as Commerce secretary nominee, citing the Obama administration's plans to have census officials report to the White House, The Hill's Jim Mills recently interviewed Campaign Legal Center Policy Director Meredith McGehee about the census issue. See a partial transcript of the interview below.

Jim Mills : What's their rationale...why are they doing what they're doing?

Meredith McGehee : I don't think they've come up with an adequate rationale, to be honest, and when you have someone in that office -- this is where the appearance matters -- Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, was indeed the chief Democratic partisan for elections here for a number of Congresses. So there's at minimum here an appearance problem.

Meredith McGehee : This is a process that should be handled with professionals. It should be at the Commerce Department, it should be adequately funded. It should be, as they say in other policies, when they talk about greenhouse gases, it should be scientifically based, and I don't think you're going to get that if you have it politicized in the White House.

Meredith McGehee : Obviously, you want the most complete census you have. If there are new ways of ensuring that the census reflects the actual population, and there's been talk about sampling and other tools, those should be examined. That decision should be made, not by someone sitting in the White House -- that should be made at the Commerce Department, and with an enormous amount of input from the professionals.

[This article does not accept public comments]


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• White House Intends to Circumvent Gregg on Census (politicalwire.com)