Shocker: Senate Ethics Committee Won’t Make Evidence In Countrywide Case Public

Saturday, August 15, 2009

With the Senate Ethics Committee letting Senators Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd off the hook there’s been a lot of “I told you so” coming from the left. But the Countrywide scandal still stinks for anyone honest enough to review the facts. And honest enough to believe that expecting the Senate to police itself is a bit like expecting three-year-olds to keep their hands out of the cookie jar.

As the old Irish toast goes, may your sins be judged by the Senate ethics committee. Actually that’s not an Irish toast but it must be the fervent hope of every politician who received a “Friend of Angelo” loan from former Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo. Late last week the six Senators on the ethics panel dismissed complaints against Senators Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd with a mere admonishment about the appearance of impropriety.

The three Republican and three Democratic Senators say they conducted an exhaustive probe and inspected 18,000 pages of documents. They say they found “no substantial credible evidence as required by Committee rules” that the Senators received mortgage rates or services that weren’t commonly available to the public, and thus did not violate the Senate gift ban.

We’ll have to take their word that the evidence wasn’t “substantial,” because they didn’t release those documents …

As for Mr. Conrad, his staff won’t say if the Senator answered questions directly or let his lawyers handle it. Either way, he has to be thrilled that his colleagues found no violation of Senate rules, even after he acknowledged last summer that he had received a benefit and promptly donated $10,500 to charity.

We’d also like to know what committee members thought of Robert Feinberg, the former Countrywide loan officer who told us last year that Mr. Dodd received, and knew he was receiving, preferential treatment. The Washington Post reported last month that Mr. Feinberg told the same thing, under oath, to Senate investigators and said that Mr. Conrad also knew he was receiving special treatment. Mr. Feinberg said the same to the minority staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Does the committee think he’s lying, or that his testimony simply wasn’t “substantial” enough? Again, we don’t know because the letters released by the ethics committee don’t mention Mr. Feinberg.

If this were a case in criminal court it wouldn’t have been dropped. There would be a grand jury indictment and the case would be heading for trial.

But it’s not a case in a criminal court. It’s a bunch of Senators who are now admitting they got preferential treatment, but claim they just didn’t know they were getting it, and are now being believed by their fellow Senators over the objections of a witness who has consistently stuck to his story both when talking to the media and testifying under oath. A witness with no apparent reasons to lie.

It would be a travesty for Conrad and Dodd to get away with this.