Bank of hysteria
Nix Mnuchin for OneWest ‘wrongs’: ads
A left-leaning research group on Wednesday started a media offensive aimed at keeping Steven Mnuchin from being confirmed as Treasury secretary.
Allied Progress launched a media blitz in Arizona and Nevada urging residents to reach out to their senators and ask them to vote no on the Mnuchin nomination.
The two states had been hit hard in the 2008 mortgage meltdown.
One TV spot asks Arizonans to tell Republican Sen. Jeff Flake “to vote ‘ NO’ on Mnuchin.” A second urges Nevadans to tell Republican Sen. Dean Heller the same.
Mnuchin headed OneWest Bank during the Great Recession. Critics attacked the bank for having improperly “foreclosed on homeowners and [having] discriminated against Latinos.”
Both Flake and Heller criticized President-elect Donald Trump during the presidential campaign.
Both also face reelection in 2018.
Heller sits on the Finance Committee, which vets and scrutinizes the presidentelect’s nominees.
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), issued a statement after meeting with Mnuchin last month claiming the nominee’s private-sector back- ground would help him “navigate a minefield of heavyhanded regulations that have stifled opportunity and growth.”
A Mnuchin spokesman said the ads “demonstrate one thing — that the far left is more focused on playing politics than working with the future administration to get things done for the American people.”
Separately, Mnuchin on Wednesday defended himself against claims that OneWest was involved in “widespread misconduct” by forcing people into foreclosure.
Those claims are “meritless,” a spokeswoman for Mnuchin’s office said.
“Steven Mnuchin and OneWest managed to issue over 100,000 loan modifications, including thousands that reduced borrower principal, on loans that he did not even originate,” the spokeswoman, Tara Bradshaw, told The Post.