Last week I closed my appearance on Bloomberg TV by announcing a call for an investigation by Congress into the Congressional Commission cover-ups.
“So what’s the problem, Richard?” anchor Stephanie Ruhle, of Bloomberg Business asked. I countered back, “the lack of prosecutions as a result of the financial wrongdoings during the financial crisis. And the lack of prosecutions does not indicate a lack of evidence, but may indicate a lack of effort. If Eric Holder is in fact sincere about pursuing this then he’ll call us whistleblowers; we know where the evidence is.”
From reading my posts, you know a lot of evidence has still not made it to the Department of Justice. As I said on Bloomberg, “to date I’ve asked four different Assistant U.S. Attorneys if they’ve seen the evidence I submitted to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.” I asked each one if they had received a referral. The answers, no!
So, as I told Stephanie and her co-host, William Cohan, my concern is, did the Congressional Commission fulfill its legal mandate to investigate what happened and turn over the evidence I had submitted to the Department of Justice (DOJ)? I stated, ”Based on what has occurred I’ve instructed my attorneys at the Government Accountability Project to send a letter to two Congressional Committees which have oversight responsibility. I documented my experience and testimony.”
Cohan, who wrote about me and the commission cover-up for the New York Times in September of 2013, and is the author of The Price of Silence, among other bestsellers, said, “you’ve made your evidence known; you’ve written letters to Robert Rubin, when he was Chairman of the Executive Committee at Citigroup; why isn’t the Attorney General calling on you and other whistleblowers? The clock is ticking.”
Yes, the clock is ticking. Time is running out.
We have a couple of months to assure action is taken since Eric Holder issued a deadline for federal prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges against individuals for their roles in the mortgage meltdown of 2008.
Am I optimistic something will happen!? No.
So I called for a congressional investigation of the cover-up of my testimony. The commission is required by law to turn any evidence found over to the DOJ, but they didn’t do that with my evidence, even though Commission Chairman Phil Angelides said they did.
Since four different assistant US Attorneys told me they had not seen any referral or evidence I gave the commission; either Angelides is lying and violating the law, or he gave it to Holder and Holder hasn’t passed on the evidence I submitted to his prosecutors.
I suspect that there may be public hearings this summer. It’s time Congress investigated.
Related Article:
Richard Bowen is widely known as the Citigroup whistleblower. As Business Chief Underwriter for Citigroup during the housing bubble financial crisis meltdown, he repeatedly warned Citi executive management and the board about fraudulent behavior within the organization. The company certified poor mortgages as quality mortgages and sold them to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other investors.
