Monday, January 23, 2012

In case you were wondering, yes, the foxes are guarding the hen house.

From Reuters, in Huffington Post, no less: "U.S. AG Eric Holder, DoJ Head Lanny Breuer Linked To Banks Accused Of Foreclosure Fraud."
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.
The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington's biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.
Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients. . .
In an interview in late 2011, Raymond Brescia, a visiting professor at Yale Law School who has written about foreclosure practices said, "I think it's difficult to find a fraud of this size on the U.S. court system in U.S. history."
Holder has resisted calls for a criminal investigation since October 2010, when evidence of widespread "robo-signing" first surfaced. That involved mortgage servicer employees falsely signing and swearing to massive numbers of affidavits and other foreclosure documents that they had never read or checked for accuracy.
Recent calls for a wide-ranging criminal investigation of the mortgage servicing industry have come from members of Congress, including Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., state officials, and county clerks. In recent months clerks from around the country have examined mortgage and foreclosure records filed with them and reported finding high percentages of apparently fraudulent documents.
On Wednesday, John O'Brien Jr., register of deeds in Salem, Mass., announced that he had sent 31,897 allegedly fraudulent foreclosure-related documents to Holder. O'Brien said he asked for a criminal investigation of servicers and their law firms that had filed the documents because they "show a pattern of fraud," forgery and false notarizations.

9 comments:

Longbow said...

Life, Liberty and PROPERTY!

III

LB

Ken said...

"On Wednesday, John O'Brien Jr., register of deeds in Salem, Mass., announced that he had sent 31,897 allegedly fraudulent foreclosure-related documents to Holder."

Hope they weren't the originals.

CowboyDan said...

"Holder has resisted calls for a criminal investigation since October 2010, when evidence of widespread "robo-signing" first surfaced."

As Dr. Phil says, "Ya think?" I can't imagine why he'd resist an attempt to investigate fraud against the taxpayers.

Maybe he'll put his IG on it when she finishes the Fast & Furious investigation.

rdf67 said...

Over 30,000 cases of fraud - Holder can't handle one out of Phoenix - why would he be able to handle any others until he takes care of the BIGGEST WHITE HOUSE SCANDAL in our lifetimes? He should be nicknamed "THE CLEANER".

Iraqvet2003 said...

Covering you in prayer, brother.

J. Croft said...

Well, if they can justify gun control by providing guns stolen from Americans by color-of-law to psychopaths who murder whoever crosses their paths, then what possible reason should anyone be surprised they'd provide legal cover for the banksters.

Anonymous said...

Most important question, er maybe only important question, is: Were any of Holder's "people" affected by any of those 31,897 fraudulent foreclosures? How many African-Americans in Salem?

Anonymous said...

Waste of time. Was there a "Raceism" angle on this? If not forget it, your not going to get any help from these bastards.

Anonymous said...

Just make them all disappear.