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MM FIRST: Jeff Connaughton, a former staffer for Joe Biden and former chief-of-staff for ex-Sen. Ted Kaufman, has a new book blasting Washington's elites for failing to come down hard on the financial industry in the wake of the 2008 crisis. In this excerpt from "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins," Connaughton details Kaufman's efforts to push the Justice Department, FBI and SEC to make high-level fraud a top priority.

"In the summer of 2009, we asked Lanny Breuer, by then confirmed by the Senate as the new assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, for a meeting. It was September before Breuer and his top team of fraud-enforcement advisors could see us. ... Ted started by saying he appreciated all the effort that he knew was under way, but that Chairman Leahy had asked him to chair an oversight hearing, which would create a public forum for learning about the strategy and direction of the Justice Department's and FBI's investigative work.

This was news to Breuer and the other Justice Department lawyers, and it certainly got their attention. In the chitchat prior to the meeting, Breuer had mentioned that he'd done a series of speeches to the whitecollar bar and that he was going to Romania (where former Biden staffer Mark Gitenstein serves as ambassador) to give a speech. I remember wondering: "What is he doing spending all his time on a speech tour?"bit.ly/Os7uWt


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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