Christopher Dodd, I’ts Time To Fess Up
The message behind Kevin Rennie’s column is simple, concise and unmistakeable: Sen. Dodd, it’s time to come clean because we’re not going away. It’s a message taht Sen. Dodd doesn’t want to hear but it’s a message that we won’t let him ignore.
‘I would never take ‘trust me’ for an answer, not even in the best of times. Not even from a president on Mount Rushmore.” So declared Sen. Christopher J. Dodd last week on the floor of the U.S. Senate during a debate on government surveillance.
Dodd declared he will not trust our leaders unless he gets to see certain national security documents. Dodd insists, however, that we trust him when he says he didn’t know he received special treatment when he borrowed nearly $800,000 from Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2003.
This calls for an FOIA request. If Sen. Dodd won’t voluntarily comply with our request that he produce documentation on what was or wasn’t said in his negotiations with Angelo Mozilo, then we’ll demand his compliance. Sen. Dodd would be wise to remember that summers are when many scandals are exposed. That’s because there’s a lull in the news. If he wants someone digging into his financial affairs, I’m certain someone will be more than willing to do that.
One thing that’s obvious is that Dodd will play this as long as possible. Here’s what I’m basing that opinion on:
Connecticut’s senior senator engaged in more disingenuous maneuvering Tuesday, telling reporters the details of his mortgages were already public records. But the mortgage deeds on the land records in Washington, D.C., and East Haddam don’t tell critical aspects of the Dodds’ odyssey with Countrywide in its heyday.
Dodd knows those publicly recorded documents do not reveal the details of his storied life on “Angelo’s List,” the hit parade of the powerful who Angelo Mozilo, head of Countrywide, took care of when they needed to borrow money. The documents Dodd won’t release might explain how he got a reduction in interest rates and fees. A copy of the commitment letters from Countrywide to the Dodds would show the initial terms of the deals, which were not as generous as the ones they got in the end.
It’s one thing for a nobody representative on an unrelated committee to play coy. It’s another when the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee plays show-and-tell with the mortgage’s documentation. That might be enough cover for Beltway media types to ignore the issue but it won’t deter bloggers from digging into things. (Personally, I’d love seeing American Thinker’s Clarice Feldman to dig into this.)
Since the devil’s always in the details, Sen. Dodd’s evasions hint that there’s something unseemly hiding in the papers that he hasn’t released. Rest assured that Sen. Dodd will release the information during a weekend or over a holiday.
BTW, it isn’t a matter of if he’ll turn the documentation over. It’s a matter of when.
Technorati Tags: Chris Dodd, Bank Documents, Angelo Mozilo, Investigation, Regulations, Sub-Prime Mortgages, Scandal, Ethics
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
June 30th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Sorry to break the news to you but Congress and the U.S. Senate have conveniently exempted themselves from any FOIA requests. You can make the request but they don’t have to comply.