mnuchin bak

primary 818 on block russia probe collusion, evil pending

220 tag mnchn

see saudi

see dept of treasury (dark $)

see 501c4 dark $ 7/18

countrywide?

evil pending

bak 919

4 24

trying to buy tiktok? why?

SEE COVID BAILOUT SLUSH FUND not a player in 3rd covid bill?

an 3 24

Trump's administration had plenty of turnover during his four years in the White House, but one person who stayed with Trump throughout most of his term was investment banker Steve Mnuchin. The former treasury secretary arrived in February 2017 — the month after Trump was sworn in as president — and stayed with him until January 2021.

Since leaving the White House, Mnuchin, now 61, has kept busy in the private sector — including, according to Bloomberg News reporters Hannah Levitt and Bre Bradham, a major banking deal in 2024.

Mnuchin, they report, has been "mining profits from a struggling U.S. bank": New York Community Bancorp (NYCB).

Levitt and Bradham explain, "Mnuchin's Liberty Strategic Capital led a group of investors that injected more than $1 billion into New York Community Bancorp while effectively taking control of the ailing lender to apartment landlords. The deal, announced Wednesday, (March 6), installed former Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting as chief executive officer."

That "intervention," according to Levitt and Bradham, "sent the troubled lender's stock soaring, giving their coalition an instant paper profit and a shot at earning billions more."

The reporters note that Mnuchin and Otting have "a track record of stirring up controversy as they chase returns."

"Before their posts in Trump's administration," according to the Bloomberg News journalists, "Mnuchin led an investor group that bought failed mortgage lender IndyMac after the 2008 financial crisis and, rebranding it OneWest, installed Otting as CEO. By the time they cashed out at more than double their purchase price, the lender was beset with accusations it had hurt communities as a 'foreclosure machine.'"

Levitt and Bradham add that Mnuchin "later irked his critics again after leaving the Treasury and raising money for Liberty from sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund."

"Now, his firm has landed this year's highest-profile U.S. regional bank deal," they report. "Unlike IndyMac, which got into trouble making residential mortgages, NYCB's woes stemmed from financing office buildings and apartment complexes. Last week, the lender's disclosure of 'material weaknesses' in its monitoring of loans pushed down its shares and credit ratings even further. As news emerged Wednesday that NYCB was seeking fresh equity, the stock dipped to $1.70 — from more than $13 last year."

*Read Bloomberg's full report at this link (subscription needed).

---

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former Trump Treasury Secretary **Steve Mnuchin** is being accused – again – of lying to Congress and of breaking the law “to protect Trump’s taxes” by one of the top Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, which just won a nearly four-year fight to obtain the ex-president’s returns.

Tuesday night the Committee voted to release six years of Donald Trump’s taxes to the public, and while Americans are waiting for that to happen the Committee’s report has revealed several bombshells about Trump’s taxes, including that IRS did not perform mandatory audits of the sitting president’s returns.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) Tuesday night posted video of him chastising then-Secretary Mnuchin during a congressional hearing in March of 2020. Pascrell is the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Oversight.

“By refusing to turn over Donald Trump’s business and personal tax returns to this committee. I think you’re breaking the law. You have no legitimate legal rationale,” Pascrell told Mnuchin during the heated session.

Mnuchin, indignant, replied, “I am not breaking the law. You have a different interpretation. You’re not a judge and this will be determined by a court,” Mnuchin said.

“Neither are you,” Pascrell replied.

“Your stated reasons for stonewalling our requests,” Pascrell added, “you never cite any superseding legal basis. The only thing you suffer is smug rhetoric and staggering lies.”

As Pascrell accused Mnuchin of lying, the Treasury Secretary can be seen raising his eyebrows and writing a note.

After a few minutes of Pascrell reading federal law to Mnuchin he then criticized him for complying with two Republicans’ request for information on “Mr. Biden’s son’s tax returns,” presumably referring to Hunter Biden.

“We’ve learned recently that simultaneously you’ve been offering documents to the loyal opposition. When two Republican Senators asked you for the private financial information of Joe Biden’s family, your department practically tripped over themselves to provide it.”

Pascrell also blasted Mnuchin for the response he received from him letter, chastising a Mnuchin subordinate who accused him in writing of being “intemperate.”

“Being lectured on civility from someone who works for the President, President Trump, is like taking chivalry lessons from Jack the Ripper. It is impossible to be polite to corruption and people who break the law.”

Tuesday night Congressman Pascrell reiterated his accusation that Mnuchin had broken the law and lied to Congress.

“Years ago I called out trump treasury head Mnuchin for breaking the law to his face,” the New Jersey Democrat tweeted. “He lied on live TV. Tonight we learned I was right he broke the law to protect trump’s taxes.”

He also tweeted, “Tonight we learned the IRS failed to follow the law and did not audit donald trump for years. Oh yeah and trump was lying when he said he was under audit.”

“Republicans are fuming we just voted to publicly release trump’s tax returns. They’re making threats. Fact: in 2014 republicans voted to release the private tax info of 51 taxpayers as part of a sham probe. Republican lies and hypocrisy know no bounds,” Congressman Pascrell added.

Watch the video from 2020 below or at this link.

an 10 21

no lnx

Now that former President Donald Trump's reign is over, the members of his administration have been forced to take their careers in different directions. So, where are the members of the Trump administration now? According to The Intelligencer, many are doing an array of different things; some of which are synonymous with the questionable activities that long-haunted the Trump administration.

Here's where the top Trump White House officials are now:

1. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is still trying to distance himself from the kidnapping of Julian Assange. According to Pompeo, he had nothing to do with it.

Pompeo is adamantly denying any involvement in the plot to kidnap Assange. A report published by Yahoo! News back in September, suggested that Pompeo was livid when he learned Assange divulged U.S. national-security secrets. In fact, the report also claimed that he participated in discussions with members of the Trump administration on how to get retribution.

However, Pompeo is still suggesting the reports are not true. "There's pieces of it that are true," Pompeo said during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. "We tried to protect American information from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, absolutely, yes … We're not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that."

2. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been milking his access to the Secret Service.

Thanks to Trump's order extending the use of the Secret Service to members of his administration, Mnuchin has used the professional perk to his benefit. The publication reports that in his first six months out of office, Mnuchin has racked up the highest Secret Service tab. The Washington Post detailed how Mnuchin managed to rack up more than $150,000 in Secret Service expenses.

The receipts showed that agents spent $114,000 over the six months to rent rooms at a W Hotel in Los Angeles, where Mnuchin has a home. They also followed Mnuchin on three trips to the Middle East, where Mnuchin is reportedly seeking to raise money from sovereign wealth funds for a new venture called Liberty Strategic Capital…

Mnuchin's travels with the Secret Service weren't all business, however. Over the six months, the records show three separate trips to Cabo San Lucas — the Mexican resort, where Mnuchin had also vacationed during Trump's presidency.

To guard Mnuchin during those three trips, the records show, the Secret Service paid $56,000 for hotel rooms and $2,000 to rent golf carts.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin is planning to use the $2.5 billion he has raised traveling so he can invest in technology and cybersecurity investments, along with "new forms of content." It remains unclear what Mnuchin specifically describes as "new forms of content" but "many big tech companies are pushing virtual- and augmented-reality hardware and content products and digital gaming."

3. Wilbur Ross is reportedly fantasizing about putting "Trump condos on the moon."

Back in February after the Trump administration transitioned out of the White House, Ross spoke with Bloomberg and shared his upcoming post-government plans; which involve "Trump condos on the moon."

On this particular afternoon, he's sitting in the living room of his 80-year-old home filled with Magrittes and Picassos, sipping a cappuccino, dressed in cashmere sweater, slacks and velvet slippers embroidered with octopuses.

Ironically, it's while ensconced in this paradise of earthly delights that Ross is gearing up to invest in space, among other possibilities. He sees opportunity in extraterrestrial tourism, manufacturing, research and habitation.

Habitation? When asked whether space would be a gold-plated real estate opportunity for Trump, Ross didn't disagree.

"Why not Trump condos on the moon?" he quipped back.

Ross' remarks came just months after the U.S. Commerce Department's inspector general released a scathing report about the former Trump official's behavior. According to The Washington Post, the IG's report "concluded that Ross had made many inaccurate statements to federal officials about his assets before taking office, though he did not willfully violate conflict-of-interest laws."

4. Ben Carson is launching a venture similar to Boy Scouts of America.

After departing Washington, D.C., Ben Carson —the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary— launched an organization called the American Cornerstone Institute.Carson's new think tank reportedly places an emphasis on discovering "commonsense solutions to some of our nation's biggest problems."

The American Cornerstone Institute

youtu.be

Carson has also created the Little Patriots program, which is described as a partisan organization for children. Speaking to The Washington Post, Carson explained the organization's initiative. "It will be something like the Boy Scouts," Carson told the publication. "But heavily exposed to the real history of America.

"You probably notice when ISIS goes into a place, they destroy the history, they destroy the monuments," Carson explained. "History is what gives you identity."

Elaine Chao contributed to calls for Kroger to be boycotted.

Chao —wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former transportation secretary— worked for several of the country's top corporations prior to her role with the Trump administration. But Intelligencer reports that "she and other Trump Cabinet alums were having a hard time finding cushy landing spots after exiting the administration. 'The feedback was 'It's too soon,' said one of the headhunters involved in an unsuccessful effort to find companies willing to work with Chao."

Despite her struggles to re-enter the corporate world, Chao was appointed to Kroger's board of directors. But given her history of abusing her power and position with the government, social media users quickly expressed outrage and urged Kroger to drop the former Trump cabinet member from its board.

6. Alex Azar is reportedly conspiring against his former colleagues.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is at odds with many of his former colleagues. In fact, several of them including —former FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield, former Medicare chief Seema Verma, and former White House COVID coordinator Deborah Birx— have reportedly joined forces to prepare their statements regarding the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19.

According to Politico, they've done so out of caution and concern about Azar possibly using them as "scapegoats" to clear themselves.

"I know the way this goes — everyone has a different perspective," Hahn said in an interview. "I wanted to tell what it was that happened and why it happened and the perspective that we had."

In calls and text messages, members of the group have swapped notes, compared recollections, and sent updates on media requests and interview opportunities, four people with knowledge of the matter said …

And in a nod to their individual battles with Azar, some have jokingly referred to the group in private as "AAA," or Alex Azar Anonymous, according to a person in direct contact with multiple members.

From the looks of it, many Trump administration officials are still conducting shady business as they did while in office.

putin dirty $ to green ngo gets used 3x, last in ukraine war?

https://republicans-science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/06_29_2017%20CLS%20%26%20Weber%20-%20Mnuchin.pdf

june 29 2017 ltr munchkin:

ref BS chain enviro command epw rept 113tth congress 2014

18 USC 2386 req for orgs that lobby to register? 1995 lobby disclosure act

sleight of hand: suggests russian $ then asserts/assumes it; klein wakefield Quin IPOC reiman

quite nato "so-called env orgs"

staffer drew colliatie, refs WFB lachlan markay WT, WE [batasch, caller hillary's leaked speeches...]

GUK fiona harvey

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/mnuchin-ivanka-trump/

nixed imf steve mnu

Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin have taken part in discussions to invoke the 25th Amendment

Meaghan Ellis

January 08, 2021

As the walls continue to cave in on President Donald Trump's presidency, many of his cabinet members have opted to jump ship. Now, reports have surfaced about the remaining members of the Trump administration who have participated in discussions about invoking the

an 1120

Flat-out sabotage' as Mnuchin tries to put $455 billion in COVID funds out of Biden team's reach

Jake Johnson

November 25, 2020

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is under fire for attempting to undermine the incoming Biden administration's response to the Covid-19 pandemic on his way out the door after his department confirmed Tuesday that it intends to place $455 billion in unspent

// miller? jewish?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/secretary-mnuchins-family-disgusted-by-steves-fealty-to-trump-his-politics-are-appalling/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/complete-bombshell-former-top-usps-official-reveals-disturbing-new-details-of-dejoy-selection-and-mnuchin-sabotage-of-mail-service

no lnx vid twt

"Complete bombshell’: Former top USPS official reveals ‘disturbing’ new details of DeJoy selection and Mnuchin sabotage of mail service

Written by Common Dreams August 21, 2020

In his first public remarks since resigning from the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors in protest at the end of April, David Williams on Thursday offered a number of alarming new details surrounding the selection of Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy as postmaster general and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s efforts to exert influence over mail operations and finances.

Williams, the former vice chairman of the USPS Board of Governors with decades of federal government experience, testified to the Congressional Progressive Caucus that what he witnessed in his final months at the Postal Service was unprecedented, detailing how Mnuchin required members of the supposedly independent board to “come to his office to kiss the ring and receive his blessing before confirmation” and made “illegal” demands of officials.

“Corruption, plain and simple. Not only is Louis DeJoy a Trump crony and clearly unqualified to be Postmaster General but he also has significant financial conflicts of interest that make him eager to destroy the USPS altogether. We won’t let him.”

—Rep. Pramila Jayapal

“The Secretary has called over board members to provide instructions and requests and express his displeasure, which is really striking. I’m not sure I’ve run into that before, where one department is trying to run another department,” said Williams, who previously served as USPS inspector general. “Normally you would simply reject the effort and report it to Congress.”

Williams told lawmakers that the removal of USPS mailboxes in several states was specifically advocated by Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was reportedly involved in the recruitment of DeJoy for the postmaster general position.

“The blue boxes were maybe the most interesting of all,” said Williams, a Democrat who was appointed to the Board of Governors by President Donald Trump. “Those were not part of ongoing plans. To my knowledge, as a matter of fact… Secretary Mnuchin wanted that done. His study of the Postal Service asked that it be done.”

In response to Williams’ account of Mnuchin’s interference at the independent agency, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said the treasury secretary should be called—and, if necessary, subpoenaed—to testify before Congress.

“This hearing is a complete bombshell,” tweeted David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, which first reported that Williams resigned from the Board of Governors in protest.

Williams also offered an inside look at the process that led to the Board of Governors’ selection and May appointment of DeJoy, a former logistics executive with zero experience working for the Postal Service.

Asked whether the board interviewed other qualified candidates for the postmaster general role, Williams answered in the affirmative and characterized DeJoy as uniquely unfit for the job, recounting that he had to be coached through his interviews. Williams said DeJoy’s appointment was pushed by John Barger, a board member and Republican donor who—according to Williams—helped DeJoy “finish a number of sentences where he got stuck” and “explained to the board what Mr. DeJoy meant during the presentation.”

Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) called Williams’ description of the selection process “very, very disturbing.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Williams’ testimony was “stunning.”

Williams’ revelations came just hours before DeJoy is set to appear before the Republican-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he is expected to face questions about his sweeping policy changes that caused massive mail backlogs across the nation.

A day after DeJoy vowed to suspend the operational changes until after the November election, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the postmaster general “frankly admitted” to her that he has “no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes, and other key mail infrastructure that have been removed and that plans for adequate overtime, which is critical for the timely delivery of mail, are not in the works.”

In a letter to the USPS Board of Governors on Wednesday, 90 House Democrats demanded the immediate removal of DeJoy for using his brief tenure as postmaster general “to sabotage the United States Postal Service.”

“Despite recent claims by Mr. DeJoy that implementation of certain changes may be delayed,” the lawmakers wrote, “he has already done considerable damage to the institution and we believe his conflicts of interest are insurmountable.”

Schumer demands Postal Board disclose how Trump, Mnuchin intervened in DeJoy’s appointment

Joan McCarter / Daily KosAugust 20, 2020

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wants some answers to questions he’s been asking since June about the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors’ selection of Louis DeJoy to be postmaster general. Schumer…

an 620

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/this-treasury-official-is-running-the-government-bailout-his-familys-investment-firm-is-a-major-beneficiary/

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have become the public faces of the $3 trillion federal coronavirus bailout. Behind the scenes, however, the Treasury’s responsibilities have fallen largely to the 42-year-old deputy secretary, Justin Muzinich.

A major beneficiary of that bailout so far: Muzinich & Co., the asset manager founded by his father where Justin served as president before joining the administration. He reported owning a stake worth at least $60 million when he entered government in 2017.

Today, Muzinich retains financial ties to the firm through an opaque transaction in which he transferred his shares in the privately held company to his father. Ethics experts say the arrangement is troubling because his father received the shares for no money up front, and it appears possible that Muzinich can simply get his stake back after leaving government....

https://www.ecowatch.com/big-oil-bailout-2645732416.html

Jessica Corbett

As calls for a People's Bailout in response to the coronavirus pandemic continue to grow across the United States, a new analysis warns that the country's Big Oil companies "stand to reap yet another billion dollar bailout" thanks to the Federal Reserve's plans to buy up to $750 billion in corporate debt.

The analysis (pdf), released Wednesday by the advocacy groupFriends of the Earth (FOE), explains that this expected bailout for polluters relates to a controversial $500 billion corporate slush fund included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that Congress passed in March....

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/republican-senators-want-to-help-coal-get-u-s-bailout-money

Politics

Republican Senators Want to Help Coal Get U.S. Bailout Money

A group of 17 lawmakers sent a letter calling on the Fed to be “broad and flexible” in its distribution of bailout funds.

By Akshat Rathi

Cooling towers belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority Paradise Fossil Plant, a generating station that used to burn coal mined by Murray Energy Holdings Co., are seen in Paradise, Kentucky, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

LISTEN TO ARTICLE

3:52

A group of powerful Republican senators wants to make sure the bailout program being administered by BlackRock Inc. on behalf of the federal government won’t leave fossil-fuel companies behind.

The U.S. government tapped BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to become the buyer of corporate bonds as part of a $454 billion effort to bail out companies hit by the coronavirus lockdown. That triggered a letter from Greenpeace, Sierra Club, 350.org and other environmental organizations on March 27 urging Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to weigh climate risk in its guidelines for BlackRock as it decides what sectors of the economy get financial support.

Now, in a letter sent Tuesday, a group of 17 Republican senators, including James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas, are asking Powell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to ensure that fossil-fuel companies aren’t excluded from the bailout program being administered by BlackRock.

The pandemic has created an unprecedented upheaval in the global economy. With governments around the world pouring huge sums of money into propping up struggling companies, climate advocates see an opportunity to speed up the transition to clean energy and make entire industries as green as possible. Republican lawmakers have opposed this encroachment from environmental groups, pushing back and largely succeeding so far in separating stimulus spending from climate concerns.

Senate Leaders Meet As Secretary Mnuchin Sees Emergency Package On Track For Monday Passage

Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota]

Led by Kevin Cramer, Senator from North Dakota, the group of Republican lawmakers seeking to safeguard fossil-fuel companies in the bailout draws heavily from states with concentrations of coal, oil, and gas extraction. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso,who also signed the letter, heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Trump and GOP cast doubt on new stimulus after securing $4.5 trillion corporate bailout: ‘No more spending’Common Dreams

'Foreclosure king’ Steve Mnuchin claims never-before-seen surge in unemployment ‘not relevant’

an 320

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/sec-mnuchin-battles-fox-news-john-roberts-on-administrations-virus-failures-nobody-expected-this-to-take-off-at-the-rate-it-did/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/sparks-fly-at-steve-mnuchin-hearing-the-only-thing-you-suffer-is-smug-rhetoric-and-staggering-lies/

no lnx

Sparks fly at Steve Mnuchin hearing: ‘The only thing you suffer is smug rhetoric and staggering lies’

Written by David Edwards / Raw Story March 3, 2020

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin expressed outrage during a Tuesday hearing after he was accused of breaking the law and “staggering lies.”

The confrontation occurred in the House Ways and Means Committee when Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) confronted Mnuchin on his refusal to turn over the president’s taxes to Congress.

“This isn’t going to be pretty,” Pascrell noted as he questioned the secretary. “It is impossible to be polite to corruption and people who break the law. So by refusing to turn over Donald Trump’s business and personal tax returns to this committee, I think you’re breaking the law.”

“The only thing you suffer is smug rhetoric and staggering lies,” he added.

Mnuchin immediate took exception to the congressman’s remarks.

“Let me just comment,” Mnuchin said.

“I asked a question,” Pascrell shot back.

“I’m commenting because I find it offensive that you’re telling me that I’m breaking the law and staggering lies,” Mnuchin complained.

“I asked you tell me why you’re not breaking the law,” the New Jersey Democrat pressed.

“Just to be clear,” Mnuchin replied. “There’s a third branch of government and there are courts that interpret things. This is in the courts and the courts will deal with it. So, that’s your interpretation of that law. I’m relying upon legal counsel on what is our interpretation of the law.”

“So in all due respect,” he remarked. “I’m not breaking the law. You have a different interpretation. You’re not a judge.”

“Neither are you,” Pascrell noted.

Watch the video below from The House Ways and Means Committee

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/sparks-fly-at-steve-mnuchin-hearing-the-only-thing-you-suffer-is-smug-rhetoric-and-staggering-lies/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-lies-and-deception-are-catching-up-to-all-of-us-as-the-stock-market-posts-worst-point-drop-ever-on-record/

no lnx

Trump’s lies and deception are catching up to all of us as the stock market posts ‘worst point drop ever on record’

President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, listens as Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar speaks to members of the press Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in the James S. brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement February 27, 2020

In a muddled, dishonest, rambling news conference from the White House press briefing room, President Donald Trump for over an hour talked to reporters Wednesday evening about coronavirus in an attempt to stave off three days of market near-collapse. He lied. He twisted the truth. He displayed little grasp of basic facts. He didn’t let the experts run the show.

He instilled no confidence Wednesday night. In fact, the DOW futures dropped as Trump began speaking:

Dow Futures dropped when Trump said the market fell 2k points because of the Dem debate pic.twitter.com/cvbviB2l9a

— Evan Siegfried (@evansiegfried) February 27, 2020

The markets on Thursday rewarded his efforts with the DOW posting the largest single-day loss in history.

BREAKING: Dow Jones Industrial Average records worst point drop ever on record, plummeting nearly 1,200 points https://t.co/T8yrpR8LHE pic.twitter.com/EaOeKgC34O

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) February 27, 2020

Why?

The Trump administration has known about coronavirus since at least December 1, 2019. It did nothing until January 29, when the White House posted a memo announcing President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force. The task force did not even include the surgeon general, making it clear the White House had little interest in communicating to the American people any sense of competence or delivering even an iota of public education.

Nearly an entire month went by. Trump and the First Family played in India, posing at the Taj Mahal, refusing to eat the specially prepared foods their hosts created just for them, and praising Prime Minister Modi as Muslims were being slayed just streets away from where the Trump family was staying.

The grandeur and beauty of the Taj Mahal is awe inspiring! ???? ???? pic.twitter.com/jcYwXHxf4c

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) February 24, 2020

“The losses mark the worse week for U.S. stocks since the financial crash of 2008. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq each also plunged by more than 4%,” reports ABC News, calling it the “worst week” since the 2008 global financial crisis.

This, as the First Family played, pretending to be on official business as the coronavirus outbreak exploded earlier this week.

Trump returned after two days of about 1000 point drops in the DOW each day. He hastily called a press conference for Wednesday at 6 PM. Just after it began at 6:30 PMit became clear there was not going to be a coronavirus czar, there was no real plan, other than to put in charge Vice President Mike Pence. Even a Fox News pundit eschewed that decision, noting Pence doesn’t believe in science, is not a doctor, and has a horrific record when it comes to public health – he oversaw an explosive HIV outbreak during which he decided to pray for guidance rather than listen to what experts told him he had to do.

And now, as the markets tumble, as Trump lies about the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. and pretends that there might not be “community spread” – the first case of which the CDC literally announced just after Trump’s news conference, it’s become even more clear Trump and his administration aren’t interested in protecting the American public, but rather, they are interested in appearing to be doing “things” that might make it appear they are protecting the American public – when their goal is to protect the markets.

That’s why Vice President Pence’s first act as head of the Coronavirus Task Force was to add top and Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to the Task Force, along with the surgeon general (finally).

Absent from the list: any public health experts, any crisis experts, anyone not from the Trump administration, the CDC, or the NIH. In other words, there is no one on the Trump Coronavirus Task Force the Trump administration cannot control.

That’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because the administration has already told the federal government all communication, to reporters and others, is to go through Vice President Pence, and it’s dangerous because there is no one who will tell Trump or Pence anything they don’t want to hear.

And what else is the Trump administration doing?

Campaigning at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Over the course of Thursday through Sunday, 21 top Trump administration officials, including the President and the Vice President, and a large number of Cabinet Secretaries, will all be attending and speaking at the far right-wing conference. CPAC over the years has hosted some of the most extreme groups and fringe elements in conservative America. Groups like the John Birch Society, and extremists like Milo Yiannopoulos — whose invitation was pulled when a vile video of him was released.

The Democratic primaries are just getting started but the markets have already voted. They have made clear they have no confidence in this President and this Vice President.

Unfortunately, those who will pay the price form that vote are, as usual, the Americans who can least afford a hit to their life savings – if they have any – or to their 401(k)s, or to the number of hours they work which will be cut so their bosses can save a few bucks when business gets bad.

The stock market has now plunged about 3200 points this week, and there’s no reason to suggest Friday will be any better, because there’s no reason to suggest this president will be any better.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trumps-treasury-department-is-now-helping-a-hunter-biden-probe-while-furiously-protecting-the-president/

new

Climate activist Greta Thunberg told the World Economic Forum that governments should divest from fossil fuels given the catastrophe of the climate crisis. In response, United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sneered at her activism and told her to go study economics. Just one problem: Thunberg was right.

Mnuchin’s own government released a National Climate Assessment in 2018 that said that climate change, if left unaddressed, would cost the U.S. economy $500 billion per year. A massive new report by the Bank for International Settlements also has linked climate change to a possible financial crisis. Furthermore, actual economist Gernot Wagner told The Washington Post that Mnuchin is completely wrong about Economics 101, using a delightful analogy about rabbits on a communal meadow.

Right-wing media sites were thrilled at Mnuchin’s attack, with some suggesting that Thunberg had a mind full of mush and others saying that people like her should be seen and not heard. In short: it was the standard information-free bullying that you would expect.

Mnuchin then dropped by CNBC's Squawk Box to discuss his remarks. What ensued was a cavalcade of lies and climate denial.

The softball CNBC interview had Mnuchin throwing out a number of right-wing talking points on climate change and generally showing that he has no understanding of the issue. Co-anchor Joe Kernan just egged him on, even suggesting that climate alarmism was driving increasing discussions of the climate crisis.

In fact, the entire conversation seemed to take place in a universe where climate change is not an urgent problem, where Australia is not on fire, where ocean life is not dying, and where the United States is not repeatedly hit with climate-fueled catastrophes like wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding. The only voice of reason in the discussion was co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin, who used JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon of all people as a counterpoint to what Mnuchin was saying. The media should be touting what experts say, not what bank CEOs are saying.

crony inside trading

c ded v an 120

...Is Mar-a-Lago a nexus for Trump’s apparent influence peddling and corruption?

Anywhere Trump shows up is a nexus for his influence peddling and corruption. It could be his golf courses or Mar-a-Lago or somewhere else. Gift-giving is a form of currency, influence-buying. Certainly Trump knows that he can buy loyalty from people. And what’s a better way to buy loyalty than if you’re president of United States and you know you’re going to assassinate the No. 2 guy in Iran and that it’s going to move markets.

On Jan. 2, the markets were up big. Soleimani was assassinated at one in the morning, Baghdad time, after the markets here had closed. There was some night trading, which was obviously going to make the markets go down the next day. Killing Gen. Soleimani was going to make the Middle East much more unstable. And what better way to reward your buddies — who were already your buddies, because they’re at Mar-a-Lago, to begin with, on New Year’s Eve — than with this little gift? It’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.

How would one send those signals? How does insider trading work?

Who are the people who know what is going to happen? Who knows about the trade docs? Steve Mnuchin, Robert Lighthizer, Wilbur Ross. Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump, Trump’s kids, Trump’s son-in-law. These people who do have knowledge of certain events are either giving gifts to friends or trying to continue to buy loyalty. What I think is more likely is that there are surrogate traders who are making these trades with inside information. They make the money and then stash it in some sort of account to be gotten back to after they leave office. But again, I don’t know. The people who would know are not cooperating. The head of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said that my article in October should have been written in crayon because it was so childlike.

To reiterate: The people who were supposed to be watching and regulating are somehow complicit, looking away, indifferent, etc.?..

new 120 an

Foreclosure King’ Steve Mnuchin tells Greta Thunberg to go study economics

Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

new

mofo mnuchin tax dodge

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-trump-quietly-handed-billions-more-in-tax-breaks-to-huge-corporations-report/

n o lnx

How Trump quietly handed billions more in tax breaks to huge corporations: report

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams December 30, 2019

215

A “disturbing” New York Times story published Monday detailed how President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department, led by former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin, has quietly weakened elements of the 2017 tax law in recent months to make it even friendlier to wealthy individuals and massive corporations.

Lobbyists representing some of the largest corporations in the world, the Times reported, targeted two provisions in the original 2017 law designed to bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from companies that had been dodging U.S. taxes by stashing profits overseas.

“The corporate lobbying campaign was a resounding success,” the Times noted. “Through a series of obscure regulations, the Treasury carved out exceptions to the law that mean many leading American and foreign companies will owe little or nothing in new taxes on offshore profits… Companies were effectively let off the hook for tens if not hundreds of billions of taxes that they would have been required to pay.”

The two provisions are known by the acronyms BEAT (base erosion and anti-abuse tax) and GILTI (global intangible low-taxed income). Shortly after Trump signed the $1.5 trillion tax bill—which slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%—lobbyists from major American companies like Bank of America and General Electric as well as foreign banks swarmed the White House in an effort to gut the BEAT and GILTI taxes.

Trump’s Treasury Department largely granted the lobbyists’ wishes, turning what was already a massive corporate handout into an even more generous gift to big companies and banks.

The Times reported:

The Organization for International Investment—a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell—objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT… This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

The lobbying surrounding the GILTI was equally intense—and, once again, large companies won valuable concessions… News Corporation, Liberty Mutual, Anheuser-Busch, Comcast and P.&G. wrote letters or dispatched lobbyists to argue for the high-tax exception. After months of meetings with lobbyists, the Treasury announced in June 2019 that it was creating a version of the exception that the companies had sought.

David Enrich, financial editor for the Times, said the newspaper’s estimate that major companies received tens of billions of dollars in additional tax breaks thanks to the Treasury Department is “conservative.”

“The cumulative effect,” said Enrich, “is that a tax law already disproportionately benefiting the richest of the rich has become an even greater windfall for the world’s largest companies and their shareholders.”

David Enrich

@davidenrich

Replying to @davidenrich

The ridiculous thing: companies appear to not be properly disclosing what they’re paying under these new taxes. Which makes it very hard to see how big this bonanza really is. Our estimate of tens of billions in savings is conservative. By @uwsgeezer https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/business/corporate-tax-cuts-impact.html …

A section of the Senate bill. Congress gave final approval to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Dec. 20, 2017.

Why the Impact of the Trump Taxes Remains Partly Hidden

New taxes should be a big expense for many companies. But they have found a way around disclosing it in annual reports.

nytimes.com

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, tweeted in response to the Times story that “Trump is the most corrupt president in history, and here’s the latest example of how that corruption helps giant corporations at the expense of small businesses and working families.”

“Too many corporations are cashing in on all the benefits of America while skipping out on the bill,” said Warren. “Companies that make massive profits shouldn’t be paying less in federal income taxes than working families.”

As Hunter Blair of the Economic Policy Institute noted on the two-year anniversary of the passage of Trump’s tax cuts last week, “the $4,000 annual boost to average incomes that the White House Council of Economic Advisers promised to working families because of the [Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] did not—and will not—happen.”

“While it’s been worse-than-advertised for working families,” Blair wrote, “the TCJA has been an even bigger boon to large corporations and rich households.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trumps-treasury-dept-pushes-plot-to-fan-the-flames-of-corporate-tax-dodging/

no lnx

Trump’s Treasury Dept. pushes plot to fan the flames of corporate tax dodging

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams November 1, 2019

President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department on Thursday took the first step toward eliminating remaining regulations designed to prevent corporations from avoiding U.S. taxes by storing profits overseas, a move critics decried as yet another harmful giveaway to big business.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, said in a statement that the 2017 GOP tax law—which disproportionately benefited the rich—rendered Obama-era rules against offshore tax avoidance “obsolete” by significantly reducing the corporate tax rate.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, disagreed with Mnuchin’s assessment, warning in a statement that the Treasury Department’s plan “only provides an opening for corporations to again dodge their taxes.”

“The corporations that got a massive taxpayer handout are getting another gift from Donald Trump,” said Wyden. “The Obama administration had essentially shut down inversion—transactions whose only purpose is to help big multinational corporations move overseas to avoid paying taxes.”

According to Bloomberg, the Treasury Department’s proposal, detailed in a policy guidance (pdf) released Thursday, “could make it easier for firms to use accounting tactics to minimize their U.S. earnings and inflate their foreign profits, which are frequently taxed at rates lower than the current 21 percent domestic corporate levy.”

“The existing regulations were aimed at stopping American companies from moving their headquarters to a lower-tax country, a process known as a corporate inversion,” noted Bloomberg.

Contrary to Mnuchin’s claim that the GOP’s 2017 tax law eliminated incentives for corporations to shift profits overseas, advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers have argued the law made it easier for businesses to avoid U.S. taxes.

“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will allow companies to avoid taxes on $235 billion in profits each year going forward,” a coalition of more than 50 progressive organizations led by Americans for Tax Fairness wrote in a letter (pdf) to Congress last May.

“Moreover, the law created new incentives for multinational corporations to move their real operations offshore,” the groups said. “The law guarantees that U.S. multinational corporations will pay at most one-half the domestic tax rate on their offshore earnings, with many companies paying little or nothing in taxes on these earnings.”

new

mnu or mooch sacarmucci at GS synthet swaps cdos?

steve mnu paid 0 for indy bank, and gov't guar lose no money, sold to buddy in same blg (bunch of pluto-crats

extensive interview: https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-23-2019/

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/

aaron glantz homewreckers

new

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/

aaron glantz homewreckers

PR shop for treas dept mnuchin

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-business/democracy-forward-files-official-complaint-coordination-between-fox-business-and

Treasury documents show just how much influence Fox has with the Trump administration

Democracy Forward has requested an investigation into coordination between Fox Business and the Trump/Mnuchin Treasury Department

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 09/05/19 2:26 PM EDT

Progressive legal advocacy group Democracy Forward this week asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general for an investigation of federal officials coordinating with the Fox Business Network in what the group called “a series of actions that could constitute illegal, government-sponsored propaganda.”

The letter was first reported on Tuesday by Maxwell Tani of The Daily Beast based on emails obtained by the group through Freedom of Information Act requests. This also follows up on another Fox News scandal from late last year regarding coordinated coverage between the show Fox & Friends and the embattled then-EPA head Scott Pruitt. (Fox News spokespeople claimed at the time that the level of coordination involved, such as prior script approval by Pruitt’s staffers, was “not standard practice whatsoever and the matter is being addressed internally with those involved.”)

Some of the newly revealed communications might be a bit pedestrian — such as Treasury officials going after media producers to refer to the Treasury secretary as “Steven Mnuchin,” rather than “Steve Mnuchin.” But the real meat of the story comes from the level of coordination between the two sides.

Just one of many examples listed in Democracy Forward’s request: In March 2017, Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary Jason Chung emailed Fox Business producer Julia Limitone to ask for multiple changes to an article she had written about Mnuchin’s trip to the G-20 summit and also for the network to send out a new tweet for the article. Limitone responded: “Jason, I just did exactly what you asked me to do, I’m going to remove that now as well. I will notify our social media team that the headline has been updated and ask them to retweet.”

To be frank, there’s probably not a politician on Earth who wouldn’t love to have a media outlet taking their instructions on story coverage. The problem is that Fox is all too eager to play along — and the network even aspires to make it a two-way street, with Fox influencing the administration itself on matters of real substance.

As The Hollywood Reporter highlighted last month from part of Democracy Forward’s document release, one Fox Business anchor sent emails urging the administration to push harder on its tax cut policy:

On April. 25, 2017, Fox Business Network host David Asman appeared to advise then-Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh (a former Fox News contributor) on how the administration should pursue a key policy goal: achieving a major tax cut. After sharing a quote from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Asman wrote in the email, "Take the BIG TAX CUTS NOW ... a long-term deal with small cuts is useless. NOTHING IS PERMANENT IN WASHINGTON. Big tax cuts now give the economy the push it needs."

After Sayegh thanked Asman for "these thoughts," the Fox Business host congratulated him on his recent Trump administration appointment. "How exciting!" he wrote. "This is a great chapter of your life, Tony. Congrats!" ("Thanks David!" Sayegh responded. "Miss all of you up there.")

Another example, laid out in the Democracy Forward letter: After Mnuchin backed down from an initial goal of passing the tax cut bill by August 2017, the administration became touchy about not being reminded of that original goal. (They eventually passed the tax cuts in December 2017.) And as it turned out, Fox News was willing to take that instruction.

Adam Shapiro, then a Fox Business correspondent (and now an anchor at Yahoo Finance), wrote in an email to then-Treasury Department spokesman Tony Sayegh after a meeting in April 2017: “I candidly shared with my producer the need to be fair and not batter Secretary Mnuchin with the old soundbite about the August TAX reform goal. [It's] old news. Never hesitate to contact me if my team gets anything wrong or is unfair.”

As Media Matters noted at the time of Fox & Friends’ Pruitt story, Fox News has shown that it will mete out virtually no consequences for its employees’ ethical lapses -- whether for the Seth Rich conspiracy theories peddled by avowed pro-Trump opinion host Sean Hannity, or its supposedly “hard news” division effectively acting as the communications wing for the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/heres-the-disturbing-reason-officials-say-the-trump-administration-isnt-putting-harriet-tubman-on-the-20-bill/

henderson

In May, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the redesign of the $20 bill featuring abolitionist Harriet Tubman would not be unveiled in 2020 as previously announced. The delay, Mnuchin said, was due to security concerns and technical reasons. But the New York Times’ Alan Rappeport is reporting that according to Treasury Department officials, Mnuchin delayed the Tubman redesign to “avoid the possibility” that President Donald Trump “would cancel the plan outright and create even more controversy.”

Mnuchin, according to the Times, seems to believe that the president is so opposed to adding an image of Tubman to the $20 bill that he feared Trump might terminate the project altogether. And by delaying it, Mnuchin at least left open the possibility of the project going forward at some point in the future. Trump has been critical of the project, dismissing it as “pure political correctness” when he was campaigning for president in 2016 — he proposed featuring Tubman on $2 bills instead.

Mnuchin, however, is denying the allegation that the delay came about in order to avoid offending Trump. Last week, the Treasury Department secretary told the New York Times, “Let me assure you, this speculation that we’ve slowed down the process is just not the case.”

A Treasury Department employee, who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Times that he or she personally viewed a digital image of the Tubman $20 bill while it was being examined by engravers and U.S. Secret Service officials as recently as May 2018 — and the Tubman redesign process, according to the Times’ source, appeared to be far along at that point.

The proposal to replace President Andrew Jackson with Tubman on the $20 bill came from Jack Lew, who served as Treasury Department secretary during President Barack Obama’s second term.

In May, Mnuchin announced that the Tubman version of the $20 bill wouldn’t be unveiled until 2028 — long after Trump is out of office. Mnuchin, during a House Financial Services Committee last month, told Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, “The primary reason we have looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues."

Tubman was a key figure in the civil rights struggle in the United States. Born in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1822, Tubman was a slave until the 1840s and battled slavery via the Underground Railroad (a network of secret routes and abolitionist safe houses). And after slavery was abolished in the U.S., Tubman made women’s suffrage a high priority. Tubman was in her early 90s when she died in 1913.

This week, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, wrote a letter to Mnuchin asking him to find a way to accelerate the release of the Tubman $20 bill. Hogan wrote, “I hope that you’ll reconsider your decision and instead join our efforts to promptly memorialize Tubman’s life and many achievements.”

‘You’re ordering me to stay here!’: Rep. Maxine Waters gets into heated exchange with Steve Mnuchin as he tells her to bang her ‘gravel’

OMG

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/saudis-and-the-us-team-up-to-kill-european-union-effort-to-create-a-dirty-money-blacklist/

United States and key ally Saudi Arabia saw their lobbying efforts pay off on Friday after the European Commission’s proposed dirty money blacklist—which included the oil-rich kingdom and several American territories—fizzled.

“The Americans fell on us like a tonne of bricks,” an anonymous Brussels official told the *Financial Times*.

The effort “to protect the integrity of the E.U. financial system,” the commission said last month, included blacklisting 23 territories that had “strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing frameworks.” They included American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico as well as Saudi Arabia.

However, as the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, “European governments, under pressure from Washington and Riyadh, have refused to endorse” the list.

“The rejection of the governments is a farce at the expense of security,” declared Sven Giegold, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany, in a statement quoted by *Bloomberg*. “France and the U.K. want to remove Saudi Arabia and other countries from the list. Spain is protecting Panama. The United States is exerting massive pressure because four U.S. jurisdictions,” he said.

“Governments must ask themselves whether they are on the side of autocrats or their citizens!” he added in a tweet.

As Politico reported, the list, which would need the backing of the European Parliament and Council of the E.U. to go into effect, “is politically sensitive because it has teeth. E.U. banks that handle payments connected to the blacklisted countries and territories would have to conduct ‘enhanced due diligence’ on any cash that moves to and from the E.U. and the blacklisted jurisdictions.”

Politico also noted the “intense backlash and behind-the-scenes lobbying from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.”

The proposal drew ire from the U.S. Treasury Department, which denounced the commission’s methodology, and its head, Secretary Steven Mnuchin, wrote to the commission to denounce the effort, as FT reported.

U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, even acknowledged that “we had to spend our energy killing this bad idea.”Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, for his part, also wrote to E.U. leaders about the “surprising and unexpected” list, and warned of its damage to “trade and investment flows between the kingdom and the European Union.”

made $ exploiting loopholes so crazy to see as reformers // clayton

liars poker book

it takes a pillage

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-november-30-2016/

But the big action on Capitol Hill is on the Democratic side. And they got off to quite a start yesterday when Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was called to the House up for both a classified briefing and a closed-door hearimg for the whole House to explain why in the world he decided to lift sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company practically in the dead of night. (If you haven’t been keeping score, Deripaska is a former associate of Paul Manafort, who reportedly owed him a large sum of money.)

We don’t know what was said in the classified briefing, but the Democrats were hopping mad about the other one. Apparently Mnuchin was completely unresponsive, reading out a prepared comment and offering up nothing else. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “It’s stiff competition, mind you, but this was one of the worst briefings we’ve received from the Trump administration. The secretary barely testified.” Mnuchin had better get used to a lot more scrutiny.

:{Steve Mnuchin Has a Gift for Ruining Americans’ Lives:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

Rebecca Burns, David Dayen - December 20, 2018 - Economy for All

imi

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steve-mnuchin-donald-trump-middle-class-tax-cut-real-thing

During the midterms, President Donald Trump stunned some political commentators with off-the-cuff promises that a middle class tax cut "of about 10 percent" was on its way. But this talk died down pretty quickly after the election was over.

Now, according to Bloomberg News, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin completely refused to discuss the matter while talking about his priority of fixing the 2017 GOP tax cut bill going into the next year:

Mnuchin said he’s hoping to work with Congress on “some minor technical corrections” to the law, such as a drafting error that denies retailers and restaurants a tax break when they make renovations. He downplayed the prospect of the middle-class tax cut that Trump campaigned on in the days leading up to the midterm elections.

“I’m not going to comment on whether it is a real thing or not a real thing,” Mnuchin said in a roundtable interview Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Washington office. “I’m saying for the moment we have other things we’re focused on.”

Mnuchin's answer essentially confirmed what many people had expected: the middle class tax cut was not, in fact, a real thing, but just a bunch of empty words Trump threw around in the hope it would help his party keep the House.

Nonetheless, Mnuchin's actual hope of fixing the real tax cut bill is a fool's errand. The law, in addition to being riddled with mistakes, is wildly unpopular, and its main accomplishment is an explosion of stock buybacks that is now outpacing normal business spending, while the middle class who were promised they would get the meat and potatoes were left to dry as 83 percent of the cuts went to the top 1 percent of earners.

The public is by now depressingly used to Trump making up outlandish lies and abandoning them the next day. But the truly craven nature of this last-ditch attempt to manipulate the electorate should not pass unremarked on.

https://www.alternet.org/trump-treasury-department-obstructing-russia-investigation

Insofar as Congress had made a serious effort to investigate Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, Trump administration has hardly been cooperative.

Indeed, according to a new report from BuzzFeed News, civil servants in the Treasury Department voiced concern last year that their department was deliberately seeking to prevent the Senate Intelligence Committee from tracking down financial records of key actors in the Russia affair:

Last year, Treasury rejected the committee’s request for help from one of its experts, even as Treasury officials have speculated — behind closed doors — that the Senate committee would not be able to follow the twisting financial trail laid out in the documents they had turned over, a path that often passes through offshore shell companies or untraceable cash transactions. In emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News, personnel within Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, discussed in 2017 whether Treasury was trying to thwart the committee’s investigation. Additionally, some FinCEN personnel questioned whether they had the proper legal authority to share confidential information about US persons with committee staffers.

Senators on the Intelligence Committee first asked the Treasury Department to disclose financial information on Trump and his associates last year. Democratic members of the committee have openly expressed frustration with how slowly the department has cooperated with them.

A spokesman for FinCEN refused to give BuzzFeed a detailed response to the story, saying "We don’t discuss the specifics of requests related to committee investigations."

But the Treasury Department's purported desire to undermine the Russia investigation squares with a pattern of apparent politically motivated refusals to embrace transparency.

Last month, the department announced that the IRS would no longer force tax-exempt dark-money political groups to report the names of certain donors in their filings. This information was not even public to begin with — it was simply used to help the IRS record where political money was coming from — but apparently, even this slightest gesture at disclosure was too much for the Trump administration.

===

https://www.alternet.org/buried-fine-print-trump-rule-would-give-25-billion-tax-cut-big-bank-fat-cats

Wall Street banks continue to enjoy record profits thanks to President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion tax scam, Trump's Treasury Department—headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin—quietly moved to hand big banks yet another major gift on Wednesday by hiding a $2.5 billion tax cut in the fine print of an "esoteric" new rule proposal (pdf).

At first glance, the Trump administration's rule appeared to be little more than a mundane set of regulations aimed at providing owners of so-called pass-through businesses everything they "need to comply with the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," as Reuters put it.

But Capital & Main journalist David Sirota decided to take the radical step of actually reading the proposal in its entirety, and he found that the White House's rule alsoseeks to exclude banking from the "financial services" category—a move that would allow thousands of large banks to take advantage of the controversial tax cut for pass-through income included in Trump's tax bill. As they were hashing out the details of their tax bill behind closed doors, Sirota notes, Republican lawmakers included a provision that prohibited businesses in the "financial services" sector from qualifying for the tax cut in an effort to counter "assertions that the bill could enrich big banks."

But, at the direction of bank lobbyists, the Trump administration's new rule asserts that "'financial services' don't include banking," thus allowing "hundreds of banks operating as S corporations—as well as their owners—[to] claim the tax cut," Sirota writes.

In addition to taking the side of bank lobbyists with its new rule, the Trump administration also explicitly "echoed their views" in the fine print of its proposal, Sirota points out.

"Banking industry lobbyists pushed for the interpretation—acknowledging that the bill generally blocked pass-through tax cuts for businesses in financial services, but arguing that 'financial services are, however, clearly something other than banking,'" Sirota writes. "The Trump Treasury Department not only sided with the lobbyists, but in the fine print of its new rule, which is now subject to a public comment period before it goes into force, echoed their views."

According Daniel Hemel, a tax law professor at the University of Chicago, the Trump administration's rule change would reward "roughly 2,000 banks around the country that qualify as S corporations."

"It's a safe bet that most of the S corporation shareholders benefited by today's decision will fall into the upper reaches of the top one percent—not many middle-class folks own a bank," Hemel told Capital & Main. "If you assume a return on assets of around one percent and S corporation bank assets in the range of $400 billion, then the move reduces the total tax liability of S corporation bank shareholders by $300 million per year for 2018 through 2025. We're talking about something like $2.5 billion total."

In response to the Trump White House's latest attempt to reward the wealthy—which comes as wages for most workers are declining—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote, "It's never been more clear who the Trump administration is really working for."

https://www.alternet.org/irs-just-made-it-easier-powerful-political-nonprofits-conceal-who-donates-them

Trump has just removed an old IRS rule that required specific types of nonprofit organizations to disclose the identities of their large donors.

As the Department of Treasury explained on its website:

The Treasury Department and IRS announced today that the IRS will no longer require certain tax-exempt organizations to file personally-identifiable information about their donors as part of their annual return. The revenue procedure released today does not affect the statutory reporting requirements that apply to tax-exempt groups organized under section 501(c)(3) or section 527, but it relieves other tax-exempt organizations of an unnecessary reporting requirement that was previously added by the IRS. Nearly fifty years ago, Congress directed the IRS to collect donor information from charities that accept tax-deductible contributions. That statutory requirement applies to the majority of tax-exempt organizations, known as section 501(c)(3) organizations, receiving contributions that can be claimed by donors as charitable deductions. This policy provided the IRS information that could be used to confirm contributions to those organizations.

By regulation, however, the IRS extended the donor reporting requirement to all other tax-exempt organizations—labor unions and volunteer fire departments,issue-advocacy groups and local chambers of commerce, veterans groups and community service clubs. These groups do not generally receive tax deductible contributions, yet they have been required to list the names and addresses of their donors on Schedule B of their annual returns (Form 990).

As The New York Times reported, "the change, which has been long sought by conservatives and Republicans in Congress, will affect labor unions, social clubs and, most notably, many political groups like the National Rifle Association and the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity, which collect what is known as 'dark money."' Treasury officials said the reporting change would protect privacy and reduce compliance costs for nonprofits, and that the IRS could still request donor information from groups in the rare event that it was needed for tax scrutiny.

“Americans shouldn’t be required to send the I.R.S. information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,” Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary,said in a statement on Monday evening.

Noti's concerns were echoed by Steven Rosenthal from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center."Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s announcement is a thinly-veiled attack on transparency in political campaigns," Adav Noti, senior director at the Campaign Legal Center and a former associate general at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), told Salon by email. "The information that he is allowing organizations to withhold from the IRS was one of the very few remaining protections for voters against the influence of foreign dark money in elections. So the administration has made a choice to deprive law enforcement agencies of the information they need to detect and deter illegal campaign spending by foreign powers."

"There’s a lot to this administrative rule under the semblance of reducing paperwork," Rosenthal told the Times. "It adds another layer of opaqueness to the tax-exempt funding."

By contrast, Republican lawmakers — many of whom claimed that the existing laws had allowed the IRS to inappropriately target various political groups during the administrations of President George W. Bush and Barack Obama — celebrated the new policy.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnelldeclared that it was "particularly welcome news to those of us who intently are focused on defending the First Amendment, for those of us who over the years have raised concerns during the last administration about activist regulators punishing free speech and free association. It’s a straightforward, common sense policy decision."

Similarly, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas,chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, declared that "for years, Members of the Ways and Means Committee have fought for an I.R.S. that is accountable to the taxpayer and does not target or single-out any person or entity based on their political beliefs."THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ALSO LAUDED THE DECISION IN AN EDITORIAL ON TUESDAY:

PRESIDENTS SWEAR AN OATH TO “PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION,” AND THAT INCLUDES GUARDING AGAINST RESTRICTIONS ON POLITICAL SPEECH. SO CONGRATULATIONS TO TREASURY SECRETARY STEVEN MNUCHIN AND ACTING IRS COMMISSIONER DAVID KAUTTER FOR ADVANCING THAT CAUSE ON THE CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE OF DONOR PRIVACY.

Treasury announced Monday evening that the Internal Revenue Service will no longer require most 501(c) organizations to include donor names and addresses on their tax Form 990 Schedule B. Nonprofits have had to divulge those sensitive details for donations above $5,000. From now on, only 501(c)(3)s that receive a tax deductible benefit will have to provide such donor information. This new IRS revenue procedure will exempt some 45,000 nonprofits from the reporting rule, including unions and social-welfare groups.

Donor names are supposed to remain private, but the government has inadvertently revealed donor lists. IRS employees also used donor-information demands as part of their harassment of Tea Party organizations during the Obama Administration. State Attorneys General have even sought to require nonprofits to release Schedule B details to state regulators, with a goal of requiring public disclosure that could tee up donors for political harassment—a threat to free speech. The new IRS policy means states won’t be able to exploit this donor information as easily.

By contrast, Democrats condemned the decision as one that would only help the rich continue to remain unaccountable, with Sen. Jon Tester of Montana describing it as "the swampiest, darkest, dirtiest decision."

This doesn't mean that nonprofits are completely off the hook.

"Organizations still need to keep the identities of donors on file, and the IRS has the power to request that information," Noti told Salon by email. "If there is reason to believe that an organization is illegally funneling foreign funds into U.S. elections, the Department of Justice or the Federal Election Commission could open an investigation."

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article182290861.html

Donald Trump’s inner circle expressed shock when Hillary Clinton failed to quickly condemn Democratic donor Harvey Weinstein after allegations of sexual assault. Now, the president’s team may find the shoe on the other foot as allegations land on a business partner of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

Mnuchin until June co-owned RatPac-Dune Entertainment, a film financing company that launched a partnership in 2013 with Warner Brothers to bankroll up to 75 films. Mnuchin himself was partnered with filmmaker Brett Ratner and Australian billionaire James Packer.

According to the Los Angeles Times, six women are now accusing Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct amid a widening scandal sweeping Hollywood.

Actress Olivia Munn was among the six women, alleging Ratner in 2004 masturbated in front of her when, as a young aspiring actress, she went to deliver a meal to his trailer.

Late Wednesday, Ratner issued a statement to the newspapersaying he would voluntarily “step away from all Warner Bros.-related activities.” The studio has not made any formal comment on the widening scandal of the future of the film-financing deal.

A person familiar with the deal, who demanded anonymity in order speak freely, said that although it runs through spring 2018, steps have been taken to get distance from Ratner. A recently expired first-look deal won’t be renewed, Ratner will no longer use a trailer on the studio lot and he won’t be part of a co-production deal with Amazon Studios on the film adaptation of the Donna Tartt novel “The Goldfinch'

The explosive allegations against Ratner don’t mention his friend and business partner Mnuchin, who was a key part of the $450 million Warner Brothers deal.

A Treasury spokeswoman, in a statement to McClatchy late Wednesday, said Mnuchin had no knowledge of his partner’s alleged improprieties.

“Mr. Ratner was an investor in RatPac-Dune Entertainment, and Secretary Mnuchin was the Managing Partner. Beyond having read allegations in the press, Secretary Mnuchin is unaware of any misconduct by Mr. Ratner,” said the statement.

Ratner attorney Martin Singer did not return a request for comment but in media reports said his client “categorically” denied the allegations. Packer could not immediately be reached for comment.

After allegations were leveled against Weinstein, Trump’s closest advisors quickly leveraged the news into an attack on Clinton.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway criticized Clinton for waiting five days before condemning Weinstein, saying: “I felt like a woman who ran to be commander-in-chief and president of the United States, who talks about women’s empowerment, took an awfully long time to give support to these women.”

The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted: “Weird, Hillary has been really quiet about Harvey Weinstein. You would think she would be all Over this. #WhatHappened?”

And the Republican National Committee sought to tie multiple Democrats to Weinstein, issuing a chart, “Harvey’s Dirty Democratic Donations.' RatPac Entertainment was co-founded in 2012 by Ratner and Packer. Mnuchin had a financial film investment company called Dune Entertainment, and joined forced with them. When the three inked the finance deal with Warner Brothers CEO Kevin Tsujihara, one of their early successes was the blockbuster Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock. More recently the partnership funded the hit Wonder Woman.

Packer in April sold his share of RatPac-Dune Entertainment to Russian-American investor Len Blavatnik for an undisclosed sum.

When he took the Treasury post, Mnuchin promised to divest his stake in RatPac-Dune Entertainment within 120 days. But that promise was engulfed in controversy months later when he appointed as interim director of Dune Entertainment his then-fiancée Louise Linton. She was a Scottish model and actress whose film credits included Serial Daters Anonymous.

Appointed in May, Linton stepped down as interim president in June to avoid conflicts of interest after they married. Their planned nuptials were a well-kept secret until just days before they wed on June 24. Mnuchin’s divestiture of his stake in RatPac-Dune Entertainment became public on June 21, although he did not reveal who bought him out or at what price.

A former Goldman Sachs executive, Mnuchin was a target for Democrats when nominated because of his “fire sale” purchase of the assets of failed bank Indy Mac amid the Great Recession. His bank later foreclosed on thousands of struggling Californiahomeowners.

Mnuchin’s new bride was quickly introduced to the rough-and-tumble world of Washington politics when she drew unwanted headlines in August for using hashtags such as #tomfordsunnies and #hermesscarf along with photos she posted on her Instagram account. Critics accused her of lending her high-profile name to the clothing and accessories she regularly wore. Linton denied receiving any renumeration.

Kevin G. Hall: 202-383-6038, @KevinGHall David Goldstein: 202-383-6125 @Goldsteindavidj

McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

And consider Steve Mnuchin, Trump's campaign finance chairman. Could he have known that the Trump Victory Fund, jointly managed by the Republican National Committe and Trump's campaign, took contributions from Intrater and Kukes?Mnuchin owned Hollywood financing company RatPac-Dune with Blavatnik until he sold his stake to accept Trump's appointment as the Treasury secretary.

Which PAC officials are making the decisions to accept these donations?

The Supreme Court

The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, and several subsequent decisions, allowed American corporations and citizens to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs and non-profit 501c4 organizations, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money. The only caveat is that PACs and non-profits cannot coordinate their activities with the political candidates they support.

The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie,president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. In 1996, Bossie was hired by Republican Rep. Dan Burton to lead an investigation into President Bill Clinton's campaign fundraising. Burton fired him 18 months later for manipulating recordings of conversations among law officials and Webb Hubbell, a Clinton confidant who resigned as associate attorney general and pleaded guilty to tax fraud during the Whitewater investigation. CNN reported at the time that Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House, called Bossie's tampering with the Hubbell recordings an embarrassment to the Republicans.

Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.

The Super PAC, Make America Number 1, is primarily funded by Trump's largest donor, Robert Mercer. His Renaissance Technologies hedge fund donated $15.5 million to the PAC.

Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, assumed control of Make America Number 1 in September 2016 and is now tainted by her role in the communications between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, hired for $5.9 million to handle the digital portion of the Trump campaign.

Robert and Rebekah Mercer are major investors in Cambridge Analytica. According to The Wall Street Journal, Rebekah Mercer asked Cambridge chief executive Alexander Nix if the firm could compile stolen emails related to Hillary Clinton so that they could be more easily searched. (This suggestion came from someone she met at an event supporting Sen. Ted Cruz, according to The Hill. Cambridge Analytica had worked on digital marketing for Cruz before he dropped out of the Republican primary.)

Nix confirmed that he had asked Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to forward the Clinton-related emails. Assange said he declined the request.

Rebekah Mercer also heads the non-profit Making America Great, formed in March 2017. The non-profit ran a seven-figure ad campaign highlighting Trump's achievements. Bossie is the group's chief strategist.[russia in brezit w/ c anal?]

Erik Prince, brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, contributed $150,000 to Mercer's Make America Number 1 PACand another $100,000 to the Trump Victory Fund. Prince has recently testified to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about his trip to the remote Seychelles for a secret meeting in December 2016 with a close ally of Putin, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The purpose of the meeting was allegedly to setup a back channel of communication between then president-elect Donald Trump and the Russians, though Prince has denied this allegation. Before the 2015-16 elections, Prince's political contributions totaled a mere $31,800 as far back as 2007, according to FEC records.

The hybrid super-PAC, The Committee to Defend the President, was formed in 2013 under the name Stop Hillary PAC. It is managed byDan Backer, the lead attorney who won the McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission case in 2014. The Supreme Court decision eliminated the cap on how much wealthy individuals can donate to federal candidates, parties and PACs in a single, two-year election cycle.

Like Bossie, Dan Backer helped to open the floodgates to millions of dollars of influence brought to bear on incumbents and their political challengers who are now pressured to kowtow to their donors with the biggest bank accounts, even if their billions are earned in Russian rubles.

Backer was born in Russia and emigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1978.

The changes to our campaign finance laws created an avenue for Russia to try to influence our elections. There are holes in our firewall and they aren't on the internet.

Cyprus is at the center of a circle of corruption surrounding Trump

Touch chart to see info:

Ruth May is a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @ruthcmay

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steve-mnuchin-heckled-ucla-students

Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin isn't accustomed to facing direct challenges to his wild economic claims or protests over the GOP tax plan he helped craft, and after experiencing both during an event at UCLA's Burkle Center on Monday, Mnuchin demanded that video of his appearance be suppressed.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mnuchin complained to the audience that he usually only talks to "people who wanna listen to me speak" after students yelled out "I think you're full of shit" and denounced the Republican tax bill as an attack on "people who are in poverty."

After noting that it was his first time speaking at a university, an increasingly "agitated" Mnuchin "stopped the conversation several times, asking the hecklers either to identify themselves or explain what they were protesting," the Journalreported on Wednesday.

UCLA initially planned to post a full video of the event to its website later this week, but a university spokeswoman told the Journal that Mnuchin "retracted his permission for the Burkle Center to post its video and podcast of yesterday’s event on its website."

But thanks to students and reporters who were in attendance, a few short videos of the event ultimately emerged on social media.

"Steve Mnuchin being called on his plutocratic BS at UCLA," student Jacob Woocher wrote on Twitter, attaching a short video of a protester yelling at Mnuchin for working to take Americans' healthcare. "Enemy of the people! Foreclosed on 36,000 people and helped pass the biggest corporate tax cut in history."

Watch:

nomi prins 12/17 AN

https://www.alternet.org/economy/next-financial-crisis-will-be-worse-last-one

...On the flip side of that euphoria however, is the fact that the median wage rose just 2.4 percent and has remained effectively stagnant relative to inflation. And although the unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, its lowest level in nearly four decades—particularly difficult for new entrants to the workforce, such as students graduating under a $1.3 trillion pile of unrepayable or very challenging student loan debt. (Not to worry though: Goldman Sachs is on that, promoting a way to profit from this debt by stuffing it into other assets and selling those off to investors, a la shades of the subprime mortgage crisis.)

Those of us living in the actual world without billionaire family pedigrees possess a healthy dose of skepticism over the “Make America Great Again” sect that believes Trump has transformed America “hugely,” for record-setting markets don’t imply economic stability, nor do 40 percent corporate tax cuts translate into 40 percent wage growth. We can march forward into 2018 carrying that knowledge with us.

But first, a recap. For the U.S. financial system, 2017 was marked by five main themes: The GOP’s “You All Just Got a Lot Richer” Corporate Tax Reduction Plan; Big Banks Still Bad; The Fed’s Minor Policy Shift; Debt; and Deregulators Appointed to Positions of Regulatory Authority.

Banks Are Still Big and Bad

The Big Six banks have paid billions of dollars in settlements for a variety of frauds committed before and since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but that didn’t keep them from tallying up new fines in 2017. The nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, agreed to pay $53 million in fines for scamming African-American and Latino mortgage borrowers with disproportionately higher rates than for white borrowers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Citigroup $28.8 million for not disclosing foreclosure-avoiding actions. Bank of America got fined $45 million for its foul treatment of a California couple trying to save their home.

But the Big Six bank that received the most attention in 2017, as it did in 2016, was Wells Fargo. The number of people affected by its fake-account creation scandal grew from 2 million reported in 2016 to about 3.5 million. That increase resulted in Wells Fargo expanding its associated class-action settlement to $142 million.

Wells Fargo was mired in smaller scandals, too. For instance, it charged 800,000 customers for auto insurance they didn’t need, raised mortgage rates for certain customers without properly disclosing it was going to, and made a bunch of unauthorized adjustments to people’s mortgages.

No Glass-Steagall Reinstatement, More Deregulation

The idea of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 featured in both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees’ platforms during the campaign season. But Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, made it clear multiple times there would be no such push from the administration, arguing against doing so before senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

To emphasize his disdain for regulation and oversight, Mnuchinalso pushed the Financial Stability Oversight Council, over which he presides, to vote 6 to 3 to rescind American International Group’s designation as posing a potential threat to the U.S. financial system. Thus, AIG will no longer be paying penance for its role at the epicenter of the last financial crisis by filing regular risk reports anymore. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also supported the move.

...

No Glass-Steagall Reinstatement, More Deregulation

To emphasize his disdain for regulation and oversight, Mnuchin also pushed the Financial Stability Oversight Council, over which he presides, to vote 6 to 3 to rescindAmerican International Group’s designation as posing a potential threat to the U.S. financial system. Thus, AIG will no longer be paying penance for its role at the epicenter of the last financial crisis by filing regular risk reports anymore. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen also supported the move.

In a major blow to citizen security, Richard Cordray, the Obama-appointed regulator, resigned as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in November.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Bashing

During his six years at the helm of the CFPB, which the Dodd-Frank Act formed in 2011, the 1,600-person regulatory entity accomplished a lot. It has provided $11.9 billion in relief to consumers for enforcement actions affecting more than 29.1 million people, handled 1.2 million consumer complaints and garnered timely responses on concerns for 97 percent of consumers.

Still, Trump appointed White House budget director Mick Mulvaney to the post that Cordray vacated.Remember: Mulvaney as a congressman wasn’t a fan of protecting consumers. “I don’t like the fact that [the] CFPB exists,” he said. “I will be perfectly honest with you.”

Over at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Joseph Otting, Mnuchin’s former partner in the takeover of IndyMac and subsequent flurry of foreclosures, was confirmed to the top position. In that spot, Otting will be able to help the Trump administration dial back more post-crisis bank regulations.

nomi prins ddjt opens llc in campaign and as pres, eg indonesia

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/

...I mean, in your wildest dreams could you make this stuff up? And worse yet, in the maelstrom of claims, tweets, wild statements, strange bits of information, and god knows what else, it would be so easy for what truly matters in our world to get lost in the shuffle. For instance, amid all Donald Trump’s bluster and tweets, it’s not hard to forget who he really is: our first elected billionaire president. (Nelson Rockefeller undoubtedly came closest, historically speaking, but he was only vice president and was in any case appointed, not elected.) Trump should be seen as the living, breathing result of an inequality gap that first began to widen almost four decades ago in the era of President Ronald Reagan and reached cataclysmic proportions in this century. It was, of course, the Supreme Court which, in 2010, released all the money that has flowed so steadily upwards into the political system big time with its *Citizens United* decision and so paved the way for the truly wealthy to organize and fund a genuine 1% politics in which a billionaire could finally become the people’s candidate.

It’s easy in the chaos of the moment -- every moment these days -- to forget that Donald Trump appointed the wealthiest cabinet in our history by a country mile and so prepared the way for the further promotion of a system in which the benefits of... well, you name it... will flow ever upwards ever more rapidly. Amid all the chaos and “fake news” of our moment, something profound is happening and, under the circumstances, it’s easy enough to ignore. However chaotically, we’re witnessing the creation of a new American system of injustice, a true government of the plutocrats. Fortunately, we still have *TomDispatch* regular Nomi Prins, author of *All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power*, to remind us of this reality, as today when she focuses on Secretary of the Wealthy... oops, I mean Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. Tom

Steven Mnuchin, Foreclosure King of America

Secretary of the Treasury for the .01%

By Nomi Prins

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doesn’t exactly come across as the guy you’d want in your corner in a playground tussle. In the Trump administration, he’s been more like the kid trying to cop favor with the school bully. That, at least, is the role he seems to have taken in the Trump White House. When he isn’t circling the Sunday shows stooging for the president, he regularly plays the willing fall guy for tax policies guaranteed to stoke further inequality in America and for legislation that will remove just about any consumer protections against Wall Street.

Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner, arrived in Washington with a distinct reputation. Back in 2009, he had corralled a bundle of rich financiers to take over California’s IndyMac bank, shut down amid the 2008 foreclosure crisis by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Bought for $13.9 billion (but only $1.3 billion in actual cash), Mnuchin turned it into a genuine foreclosure machine, in the process sealing his own fate when it came to his future reputation. At the time, he didn’t appear concerned about public approval. Something far more valuable was at stake: the $200 million that, according to Bloomberg News, he raked in personally, thanks to the deal.

No such luck, of course, for the bank’s ordinary borrowers. During Mnuchin’s reign, IndyMac carried out more than36,000 foreclosures, tossing former homeowners (including active duty military servicemen and women) onto the street without hesitation or pity by any means necessary. According to a memo obtained by investigative reporter David Dayen, OneWest, the new name that Mnuchin and his billionaire posse coined for Indybank, of which Mnuchin was now CEO and chairman, “rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”

Now, Mnuchin remains bitter and frustrated that he can’t kick the reputation he got in those days. As he told a House Financial Services Committee Congressional hearing this July, "I take great offense to anybody who calls me the foreclosure king." Such indignation would ring truer if, in May, one of Mnuchin’s banking units, a company called Financial Freedom, hadn’t agreed to pay a more than $89 million settlement to the government for taking unreasonable advantage of thousands of seniors through reverse mortgages which convert equity in a home into a loan. (A few months later, in August, a watchdog group, Campaign for Accountability, called upon the Justice Department to investigate Mnuchin for allegedly making false statements under oath to Congress about his actions at OneWest between 2009 and 2015.)

Like Donald Trump, Mnuchin is a man intent on making the rich richer and to hell with everyone else. Continually channeling Trump’s ego, whatever his smoldering resentments may be, he soldiers on -- and in the context of the Trump White House successfully indeed. After all, this administration has lost 14key people in less than a year, including an FBI director, a national security adviser, a White House chief of staff, and a White House communications director. Through it all, Mnuchin has remained in place, one of the relatively few members of The Donald’s original team not related by blood or marriage who is seemingly thriving. (Admittedly, he and the president were linked in what CNN once called a “business capacity” even before he became Trump’s campaign finance director in May 2016.)

Hamilton, Trump, and a Playbill for the Economy

...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176348/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_you%2C_sir%2C_are_no_alexander_hamilton

ref RU solani

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-24-2017/ JP morgan sold bad morts, but said did not when make $, deneid when cost $, then forgave loans that led to zombie foreclosure sometimes years after.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steven-mnuchin-famous-throwing-tens-thousands-americans-streets-housing

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doesn’t exactly come across as the guy you’d want in your corner in a playground tussle. In the Trump administration, he’s been more like the kid trying to cop favor with the school bully. That, at least, is the role he seems to have taken in the Trump White House. When he isn’t circling the Sunday shows stooging for the president, he regularly plays the willing fall guy for tax policies guaranteed to stoke further inequality in America and for legislation that will remove just about any consumer protections against Wall Street.

Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner, arrived in Washington with a distinct reputation. Back in 2009, he had corralled a bundle of rich financiers to take over California’s IndyMac bank, shut down amid the 2008 foreclosure crisis by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Bought for $13.9 billion (but only $1.3 billion in actual cash), Mnuchin turned it into a genuine foreclosure machine, in the process sealing his own fate when it came to his future reputation. At the time, he didn’t appear concerned about public approval. Something far more valuable was at stake: the $200 million that, according to Bloomberg News, he raked in personally, thanks to the deal.

No such luck, of course, for the bank’s ordinary borrowers. During Mnuchin’s reign, IndyMac carried out more than 36,000 foreclosures, tossing former homeowners (including active duty military servicemen and women) onto the street without hesitation or pity by any means necessary. According to a memo obtained by investigative reporter David Dayen, OneWest, the new name that Mnuchin and his billionaire posse coined for Indybank, of which Mnuchin was now CEO and chairman, “rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”

Now, Mnuchin remains bitter and frustrated that he can’t kick the reputation he got in those days. As he told a House Financial Services Committee Congressional hearing this July, "I take great offense to anybody who calls me the foreclosure king." Such indignation would ring truer if, in May, one of Mnuchin’s banking units, a company called Financial Freedom, hadn’t agreed to pay a more than $89 million settlement to the government for taking unreasonable advantage of thousands of seniors through reverse mortgages which convert equity in a home into a loan. (A few months later, in August, a watchdog group, Campaign for Accountability, called upon the Justice Department to investigate Mnuchin for allegedly making false statements under oath to Congress about his actions at OneWest between 2009 and 2015.)

Like Donald Trump, Mnuchin is a man intent on making the rich richer and to hell with everyone else. Continually channeling Trump’s ego, whatever his smoldering resentments may be, he soldiers on -- and in the context of the Trump White House successfully indeed. After all, this administration has lost 14key people in less than a year, including an FBI director, a national security adviser, a White House chief of staff, and a White House communications director. Through it all, Mnuchin has remained in place, one of the relatively few members of The Donald’s original team not related by blood or marriage who is seemingly thriving. (Admittedly, he and the president were linked in what CNN once called a “business capacity” even before he became Trump’s campaign finance director in May 2016.)

Hamilton, Trump, and a Playbill for the Economy

...

Coming from a Goldman Sachs alum, that should have rung a few bells. After all, in the fall of 2008, with the stock market tanking and banks imploding, then-Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson took a similar position with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Following that chamber’s initial rejection of a $700 billion bank bailout bill that sent the markets into a tailspin, he warned that, if she didn’t get it through, the big banks would stop providing money to the American public. Sure enough, Congress complied. With 91 Republicans joining 172 Democrats, the bill passed by a vote of 263 to 171.

Nine years and a plethora of big bank subsidies later, Mnuchin conflated market levels with legislation in a similarly threatening manner. As he told Politico, “There is no question that the rally in the stock market has baked into it reasonably high expectations of us getting tax cuts and tax reform done." He then added, "To the extent we get the tax deal done, the stock market will go up higher." But with that, of course, went a warning: “There’s no question in my mind that if we don’t get it done you’re going to see a reversal of a significant amount of these gains.”

And speaking of reversals, the “Mnuchin Rule,” as it was dubbed in January, 2017, underscored the then-prevailing Trump administration position that the wealthy should not be afforded tax cuts. By October, however, Mnuchin had changed his rule. "When you're cutting taxes across the board,” he explained to Politico, “it's very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy with tax cuts to the middle class. The math, given how much you are collecting, is just hard to do.”

Actually, the math isn’t hard to do at all. My eight-year-old niece could do it. If you make more than a certain amount, your tax rates shouldn’t get cut. That’s the only math that makes sense. But in the land of tax subterfuge, even if you leave a top tax bracket rate as it is, you can still ensure that the wealthy get all the breaks in other ways.

On November 2nd, the Republicans finally released their “Tax Cuts and Job Act,” which contained new blows to middle-class wellbeing, including the elimination of deductions for medical expenses, student loan interest, and state and local taxes. For corporations, already flush with cash, the plan calls for a significant, not to say staggering, tax break. Their tax rate would be slashed from 35% to 20%.

And don’t forget repealing the estate tax, that other classic benefit for “the masses.” Count on one thing: there will be no reversals from Mnuchin or Trump on that because the math couldn’t be clearer. Only the hyper-wealthy have estates big enough to reap rewards from such a change. At an Institute for International Finance conference, even Mnuchin had to agree that this was a benefit of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich: “Obviously, the estate tax, I will concede, disproportionately helps rich people.” Indeed, the heirs to the estates of fewer than 1 in 500 Americans who die each year would benefit in any way from such a repeal, though the children or other relatives of 13 of the 24 members of Donald Trump’s cabinet and the president himself would baga collective estate tax break of about $1.5 billion.

Still, don’t think that everything’s coming up roses for our latest secretary of the Treasury. Wall Street may now be king in Washington, but Mnuchin is not (though he is clearly a prince to the one man who truly matters right now, Donald Trump). In his efforts to promote the Trump vision (whatever that might be), the Treasury secretary seems to be coming up distinctly short, even with Republicans in Congress who have described his approach to lawmaking in terms ranging from “uncomfortable” to “intellectually insulting.”

Donald Trump, of course, campaigned as an anti-establishment candidate who would offer a hand to regular people, drain the Washington swamp, and have our backs. Then he promptly began filling his administration, especially when it came to the economy, with the richest of the rich, figures guaranteed to promote the dismantling of whatever tepid regulations remained to protect citizens from economic disaster while enriching the usual .01%.

Mnuchin has yet to even do something as simple and seemingly straightforward as posting a full-scale explanation of the tax plan he’s plugging so hard at the Treasury Department’s web page. Even though until November 2nd it remained a chimera, that hasn’t stopped him from rushing to its defense -- the defense that is, of giving the extremely wealthy yet more of their money back. Welcome to the twenty-first-century American politics of the .01%.

Meanwhile, Mnuchin has noted that he’s a big fan of biographies, though his schedule doesn’t allow much time for “pleasure reading.” When asked about Alexander Hamilton, he said, “I have a beautiful painting of him in my office. He stares at me every day and I look at him for great advice.”

But Hamilton understood that, without adequate taxation, you couldn't run a country, or pay its debts, a stance that informed how he implemented federal taxes in the new nation. As he said in 1801, “As to taxes, they are evidently inseparable from government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.” He also believed that those with more money should pay more taxes. His excise tax plan, for example, required the taxation of luxury items, bastions of the rich.

This government has, in fact, received more than $2.96 trillion in total tax revenues so far in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2017. That figure comes with a budget deficit of $673.7 billion, which means that if the rich or corporations were to cease to pay various taxes (at least at present rates), money would still have to come from somewhere. To begin to make up for the shortfall, the less wealthy will simply have to pay more in some fashion, as will states and cities, and cuts in social spending will undoubtedly follow as night does day.

The High-Flying Treasury Secretary Covers Trump’s Back

Mnuchin himself knows a situation ripe for the picking when he sees it, in government or out. Take, for instance, his prodigious use of military planes for his personal travel, both on government business and for pleasure. These flights have pushed the boundaries of judgement, if not legality. According to a report from Rich Delmar, the counsel to the Treasury Department’s inspector general, Mnuchin took military aircraft on at least seven occasions without obtaining appropriate authorization, skirting a "rigorous" preapproval process established to avoid undue use of such expensive amenities. And though he withdrew a request to take his wife on their honeymoon to Europe last summer by military aircraft, he did use an Air Force jet to fly to Kentucky with her to watch the solar eclipse and -- he carefully added -- to “review the gold” at Fort Knox. Unlike Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price whose government aircraft fetish cost him his job, Fort Knox covered the solar eclipse for Mnuchin.

He classified each of those trips as a “White House support mission,” which sounds dramatic and is a category technically reserved for situations in which commercial flights aren’t available or there is a national security or other emergency. I checked, however. There are several $200 economy flights from Washington to Kentucky, which more than beats the $10,000 per hour the Pentagon charges as its official aircraft expense when its planes are used in this way.

In addition to those flights, Mnuchin has been flying high as a kind of second Kellyanne Conway on all sorts of non-Treasury-related topics that threaten to eclipse his boss. With Trump embroiled in a bitter war of words with National Football League players taking a knee over racism, Mnuchin saw an opportunity and cruised the Sunday talk-show circuit attacking the players. He used his platform to insist that they should "do free speech on their own time” -- “off the field,” not on it.

About a week later, he responded to the flak over the president’s lackluster support for Puerto Rican recovery after Hurricane Maria devastated that island. Defending his boss and his tweets in another circuit of those talk shows, he doubled down on White House criticisms of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz. “When the president gets attacked, he attacks back,” he told Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, adding, "I think the mayor's comments were unfair given what the government has done."

While the head of the Treasury isn’t an elected official, his words do hold considerable weight -- and he is, after all, fifth in the line of succession for the presidency. The value, insights, and credibility of the Treasury Department impact economies, markets, investors, and confidence the world over.

Simply Swampy

Call it lying, misleading, flip-flopping, or the invocation of the “rights” of privilege, but Mnuchin has already amassed quite a catalogue of questionable statements in his brief career in public office and, while he’s been at it, he’s even made extra money along the way: at least $15 million and possibly as much as $53 million, reports Fortune, from “entertainment and real estate interests that he sold to comply with federal conflict of interest rules.”

For him, as for his boss, whatever anyone says, the bottom line and their allegiance remains simple and clear: it’s not to the middle class; it’s to their class, the half-billion and up folks.

Alexander Hamilton was no stranger to wealth either, but he understood that the nation’s wealth should be shared more evenly. He attempted to use his office as a national unifier and a place to coordinate efforts to pay off debts from the Revolutionary War. Mnuchin’s doctrine is one of returning to a world of fewer rules for Wall Street and fewer taxes on corporations and the wealthy, which, in translation, means greater risks and costs for the rest of us and for the country as a whole. While President Trump isn’t exactly the cannot-tell-a-lie inheritor of the Washingtonian tradition, his Treasury Secretary, the foreclosure king of America, is distinctly no Alexander Hamilton.

Nomi Prins

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/05/what-are-steve-mnuchin-and-jeff-sessions-hiding-trumps-cabinet-appointees-have-huge-gaps-in-their-records/

...There are plenty of reasons for Mnuchin to not want to draw attention to this part of his record. His future boss Donald Trump used Goldman Sachs as a cudgel to beat Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign over paid speeches she gave to groups at the bank. The firm is also associated with the reckless gambles and greed that caused the Great Recession, and the name alone can cause the public to spit like a Jewish grandmother at the mention of it.

And OneWest stands accused of a vast ocean of unethical and downright inhumane behavior during the foreclosure crisis of a few years ago. This includes an infamous incident when the bank foreclosed on the home of a 90-year-old woman who accidentally shorted one mortgage payment by 27 cents.

All of this would be embarrassing for a president who is still claiming to be a populist wanting to “drain the swamp” and lift up the American people — at least, if Donald Trump were capable of feeling shame. But Trump won’t be the one in the hearing room, and this history, particularly the part at OneWest, could make for a very difficult grilling for Mnuchin, assuming Senate Democrats are willing to put up a fig...

http://www.alternet.org/economy/trumps-treasury-pick-excelled-kicking-elderly-people-out-their-homes

In 2015, OneWest Bank moved to foreclose on John Yang, an 80-year-old Korean immigrant living in Orange Park, Florida, a small suburb of Jacksonville. The bank believed he wasn't living in his home, violating the terms of its loan. It dispatched an agent to give him legal notification of theforeclosure.

Where did the bank find him? At the same single-story home the bank had said in court papers he did not occupy.

Still OneWest pressed on, forcing Yang, a former Christian missionary, to seek help from legal aid attorneys. This year, during a deposition, an employee of OneWest'sservicing division was asked the obvious question: Why would the bank pursue a foreclosure that seemed so clearly unjustified by the facts?

The employee's response was blunt: "You're trying to make logic out of an illogical situation."

Yang was lucky. The bank eventually dropped its efforts against him. But others were not so fortunate. In recent years, OneWest has foreclosed on at least 50,000 people, often in circumstances that consumer advocates say run counter to federal rules and, as in Yang's case, common sense.

President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary has prompted new scrutiny of OneWest's foreclosure practices. Mnuchin was the lead investor and chairman of the company during the years it ramped up its foreclosure efforts. Representatives from the company and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Records show the attempt to push Mr. Yang out of his home was not an unusual one for OneWest's Financial Freedom unit,which focused on controversial home loans known as reverse mortgages. Regulators and consumer advocates have long worried that these loans, popular during the height of the housing bubble, exploit elderly homeowners.

The loans allow people to benefit from the equity they have built up over many years without selling their houses. The money is paid in a variety of ways, from lump sums to a stream of monthly checks. Borrowers are allowed to stay in their homes for as long as they live.

The loans are guaranteed by the U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development, meaning the agency pays lenders like Freedom Financial the difference between the ultimate sale price of the home and the size of the reverse mortgage.

But the fees are often high and the interest charges mount up quickly because the homeowner isn't paying down any of the principal on the loan. Homeowners remain on the hook for property taxes and insurance and can lose their homes if they miss those payments.

A 2012 report to Congress by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that "vigorous enforcement is necessary to ensure that older homeowners are not defrauded of a lifetime of home equity."

ProPublica found numerous examples where Financial Freedom had foreclosed for legally questionable reasons. The company served several other homeowners at their homes to let them know they were being sued for not occupying their homes. In Florida, a shortfall of only $0.27 led to a foreclosure attempt. In Atlanta, the company sought to foreclose on a widow after her husband's death, but backed down when a legal aid attorney sued, citing federal law that allowed the surviving spouse to remain in the home.

"It appears their business approach is scorched earth, in a way that doesn't serve communities, homeowners or the taxpayer," said Alys Cohen, a staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center in Washington D.C.

Since the financial crisis, OneWest, through Financial Freedom, has conducted a disproportionate number of the nation's reverse mortgage foreclosures. It was responsible for 16,200 foreclosures ongovernment-backed reverse mortgages, or 39 percent of all foreclosures nationwide, from 2009 through late 2014, even though it only serviced about 17 percent of the loans, according to government data analyzed by the California Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group for low-income consumers. While some foreclosures were justified, legal aid attorneys sayFinancial Freedom has refused to work with borrowers in foreclosure to establish payment plans, in contrast with other servicers of reverse mortgages.

Experts say the companies are not entirely to blame for the wave of foreclosures. HUD oversees standards on most reverse mortgages. In the years after the housing crash, HUD's rules evolved, creating a miasma of confusion for mortgage servicers. Companies say the new federal rules required them to foreclose when borrowers fell far behind on property and insurance costs, rather than work out payment plans.

OneWest's rough treatment of homeowners extended to its behavior toward borrowers with standard mortgages in the aftermath of the housing crash. In 2009, the Obama administration launched a program to encourage mortgage servicers to work out affordable mortgage modifications with borrowers. OneWest, weighed down by several hundred thousand souring mortgages, signed up.

It didn't go well. About three-quarters of homeowners who sought a modification from OneWest through the program were denied, according to the latest figures from the Treasury Department.OneWest was among the worst performing large servicers in the program by that measure. In 2011, activists protested OneWest's indifference at Mnuchin's Bel Air mansion in Los Angeles.

"We're in a difficult economic environment and very sympathetic to the problems many homeowners face, but under the government's program there's not a solution in every case," Mnuchin told the Wall Street Journal in that year.

Despite the controversy, Mnuchin and the other investors in OneWest made a killing on their purchase. In 2009, Mnuchin's investment group bought the failed mortgage bank IndyMac, which had been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after the financial crisis, changing the name to OneWest. They paid about $1.5 billion, with the FDIC sharing the ongoing mortgage losses.George Soros,a Clinton backer at whose hedge fund Mnuchin had worked, and John Paulson, a hedge fund manager who also supported Trump, invested alongside Mnuchin in IndyMac. [ // russian oligarchs?]

In 2015, CIT, a lender to small and medium-sized businesses, bought OneWest for $3.4 billion, more than doubling the Mnuchin group's initial investment. Mnuchin personally made about $380 million on the sale, according to Bloomberg estimates. He retains around a 1 percent stake in CIT, worth around $100 million, which he may have to divest if confirmed.

CIT has found the reverse mortgage business to be a headache. Recently, CIT took a $230 million pretax charge after it discovered that OneWest had mistakenly charged the government for payments that the company should have shouldered itself. An investigation of Financial Freedom's practices by HUD's inspector general is ongoing.

Yang's lawyers at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid fought his foreclosure for a year. Though Yang had run a dry cleaning business in Florida and roamed the world as a missionary, working in North Korea, China, and Afghanistan, the bank's torrent of paperwork had overwhelmed him. Yang didn't speak English well. OneWest claimed it had sent him forms to verify he was living at his home, but that he never sent them back.

Under HUD rules, OneWest was required to verify that each borrower continued to use the property as a principal residence. It is a condition of all the HUD-backed loans in order to help ensure the government subsidy goes to those who need it.

But Yang can be forgiven for thinking that OneWest could not have doubted that he was still in his home. During the same period that OneWest was moving to foreclose on Yang for not living in his home, another arm of the bank regularly spoke and corresponded with him at his home about a delinquent insurance payment, according to court documents.

A Financial Freedom employee testified in the case that the department that handled delinquent insurance payments and the department that handled occupancy did not communicate with each other in those circumstances.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

Paul Kiel is a reporter for ProPublica.

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/05/05/19634/donald-trumps-new-finance-guru-once-clinton-donor-soros-employee

Like Donald Trump himself, the Trump campaign’s new national finance chairman has a long history of contributing to Democrats — including Hillary Clinton.

Private investor Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s newcampaign fundraising guru, has contributed more than $120,000 to a mix of Democrats, Republicans and bipartisan political groups since 1995, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission and Center for Responsive Politics data indicates.

Over the years, more than half of Mnuchin’s federal-level political contributions have benefited Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Clinton, Trump’s all-but-certain general election rival.

About one-third of Mnuchin’s giving has benefited Republicans. The rest has gone to nonpartisan political action committees such as the PAC of Goldman Sachs, where Mnuchin worked for 17 years.

Each election cycle, Mnuchin — also a bankroller of blockbuster movies such as “American Sniper,” “Gravity” and “Avatar” — has frequently donated to the campaigns of presidential contenders.

During the 2000 presidential election, Mnuchin donated to Democrats Al Gore and Bill Bradley and Republican Steve Forbes.

During the 2004 presidential race, he donated to two Democratic candidates: John Kerry and John Edwards.

And ahead of the 2008 presidential election, Mnuchin donated not only to Obama, Clinton and Edwards, but also to Democrats Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson. Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney also received contributions from Mnuchin.

During the 2012 presidential race, Mnuchin donated to both Romney and fellow Republican Tim Pawlenty.

Mnuchin’s contributions to Democrats extend to the current cycle.

For instance, he donated $2,000 in February to the U.S. Senate campaign of California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat. Last year, Harris described Trump, who had personally contributed money in 2013 to Harris’ political committee, as “someone who clearly cannot be a leader.”

Mnuchin and the Trump campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on Mnuchin’s political contributions.

Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner, is the chairman and chief executive officer of private investment company Dune Capital LP.

Mnuchin also has professional ties to George Soros, the billionaire financier who’s contributed tens of millions of dollars to Democratic political causes over the years,including $7 million this election cycle to Priorities USA Action, a pro-Clinton super PAC.

From 2003 to 2004, Mnuchin worked as chief executive of SFM Capital Management, which the Wall Street Journal reports is backed by Soros. He also worked for Soros Fund Management LLC, according to Bloomberg.

(The Center for Public Integrity receives funding from the*Open Society Foundations*, which Soros funds. A complete list of Center for Public Integrity funders is *found here*.)

Trump himself has been forced to defend his past campaign contributions to Democrats this cycle, arguing that there are few alternatives to Democrats in New York.

“Am I going to contribute to a Republican for my whole life when they get, they run against some Democrat?” he said. “And the most they can get is one percent of the vote.”