As the ‘rasslin’ match in the Senate goes on, return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear—namely, 2017—when we all could hang out together and would socially distance ourselves only for petty personal reasons, and Steve Mnuchin was still merely the nominee for Secretary of the Treasury. It was clear throughout his confirmation hearings that a) Mnuchin richly deserved having been called The Foreclosure King in his days as a banker, and b) that he considered telling the whole truth about things to be largely a suggestion. As we wrote back then:

There is no question that Mnuchin at the very least barbered his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. He said that his company did not engage in the loathsome practice of robo-signing mortgage foreclosures. It did. He tap-danced around how he'd used a tax shelter in the Cayman Islands to help his clients dodge their taxes. He claimed he didn't realize that real estate he owns that was valued at nearly $100 million was an "asset" when he failed to report said holdings on his disclosure forms. Who among us has not forgotten $100 million in real estate, I ask you.



During those hearings, Senator Professor Warren and some of her Democratic colleagues from the Senate Finance Committee arranged hearings at which some of the victims of Mnuchin’s chicanery were allowed to tell their stories.



Christina Clifford was one of those people who, when her business cratered during the 2008 recession, applied to Mnuchin's bank to modify the loan on her condominium in California. Twice, Clifford went through the application process. Both times, the bank said it had not received her paperwork even though it cashed the checks she'd sent along with it. Then, the bank foreclosed and gave her five days to move. "So, basically, all the work I did was null and void," Clifford said. "It was a nightmare.”...

Besides Clifford, the witnesses included Colleen Ison-Hodroff, an 84-year old widow from Minnesota who got played on a reverse-mortgage by a OneWest subsidiary that demanded she pay the full balance a few days after her husband's funeral, as well as Heather McCreary and Sylvia Oliver, both of whom are currently going through the loan-modification maelstrom. Oliver was able to make the trip only because she got a 30-day extension of a foreclosure that was scheduled for Wednesday.



So, as Mitch McConnell fusses and fumes, try to remember that the guy behind these stories of poisonous economic deceit and persiflage is the guy to whom the Republicans want to hand a half-trillion bucks to dole out with practically no oversight at all, and that he now works for the king grifter in the White House whose only really financial expertise can be summed up by the question, “Me some too, yes?” There is no reason for any thinking person to vote to give Steve Mnuchin a blank check. I wouldn’t buy an apple from the man.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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