Say Anything Blog

Who didn’t see this coming?

Looks like Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad are off the hook with the Senate Ethics Committee regarding their VIP mortgages from Countrywide Financial.

In letters sent to the senators this afternoon and just posted on the Ethics Committee website, the committee said it found no credible evidence that the Countrywide mortgages violated Senate ethics rules. Furthermore, the committee investigation found that the actual mortgage rates offered to Dodd and Conrad under the VIP program “were not the best deals available at Countrywide or in the marketplace at large.”

So after 18,000 pages of documents and a year-long investigation, the Ethics Committee is saying these “sweetheart” loans weren’t even all that sweet.

Still,  the committee admonished the senators for their lack of discretion, saying they should have “exercised more vigilance” in order to avoid the appearance that they were receiving preferential treatment.

“This is most welcome news,” Conrad said in a statement. “The Ethics Committee’s exhaustive inquiry confirms what I have said all along: I did not ask for or receive any preferential pricing on my loans. While I should have shown more vigilance in the appearance of these transactions, the committee has concluded I did nothing unethical, and that is the truth.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Conrad didn’t ask for any preferential treatment.  He just happened to talk to the CEO of the lending company when applying for a loan.  And the internal Countrywide email from Robert Feinberg, who handled Conrad and Dodd’s loans, to CEO Angelo Mozilo in which he told Conrad that he’d ask the CEO if he could waive the rule against financing commercial properties larger than 4 units (like the complex Conrad financed in Bismarck)?  Despite the fact that it clearly indicates that Conrad was told he was getting special treatment because he was a Senator, it apparently doesn’t matter.

The Senate Ethics committee is a joke.  Expecting these people to police themselves is like asking bank robbers to turn themselves in.