Prepare to be Outraged!

http://www.judicialwatch.org/weeklyupdate/2011/04-important-air-pelosi-update#anchor2

Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Fannie, Freddie Legal Fees
Prepare to be outraged.

When government officials pitched the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “bailouts” to the American people, we were told the purpose of this “taxpayer investment” was to bring solvency to two institutions that were simply “too big to fail.”

Nobody ever said anything about forcing the taxpayers to pay the legal bills of the political Fannie and Freddie executives who were key to creating the housing crisis. But that’s exactly what’s happening.

The New York Times broke the story:
Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud. The cost was a closely guarded secret until last week, when the companies and their regulator produced an accounting at the request of Congress.

The bulk of those expenditures — $132 million — went to defend Fannie Mae and its officials in various securities suits and government investigations into accounting irregularities that occurred years before the subprime lending crisis erupted. The legal payments show no sign of abating.

One of the crooked executives specifically referenced by the Times is none other than Franklin Raines, Bill Clinton’s former budget director, who took a job as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2004. Raines allegedly cooked the books at Fannie, issued countless dubious mortgages, and then took a huge bonus before leaving the company. He is one of three executives who divvied up a tidy $24.2 million from the taxpayers to defend themselves in court.

 

Democrat crooks and thieves convicted by their own words.

Good find, Bro. Curtis. I had seen some of the quotes, but there's nothing like catching criminals on video.