Senator Elizabeth Warren launched a withering attack on the leadership of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairwoman Mary Jo White on Tuesday. In a 13-page letter, the Massachusetts senator told White she found her performance as Wall Street’s top cop “extremely disappointing”.

Among Warren’s main complaints are the SEC’s failure to finalize Dodd-Frank rules requiring companies to disclose the ratio of CEO pay to median worker pay, its failure to curb the use of waivers for companies that violate securities laws, and the number of SEC settlements that have not required an admission of guilt.

Warren said the SEC is supposed to act as “the cop on the beat for an honest marketplace” and that when it fails to do its job, “it touches every American family”. She also included six requests for information, asking that White respond and answer them by no later than later than 1 July.

“During your confirmation hearing two years ago, I said: ‘The SEC needs a strong leader to issue meaningful and final rules under the Dodd-Frank Act and to hold big banks and other powerful interests accountable when they break the law.’ I am disappointed that you have not been the strong leader that many hoped for – and that you promised to be,” Warren said.

After she took up her post, White defended the “don’t admit, don’t deny” protocol that allows companies to reach settlements without admitting wrongdoing. White called it a “major, major tool in [agency’s] arsenal”, which saves resources and allows the agency to get money to investors much more quickly. And while in June 2013 she said that the agency would be “seeking admissions in certain cases going forward”, she also stressed that the “don’t admit, don’t deny” protocol would remain for “majority of the cases”.



In 2013, White was appointed to her position as the 31st chair of the SEC amid criticism over her past as a Wall Street lawyer. Her past has haunted White in her role as the SEC chair. According to Warren, White has “been unable to participate in numerous cases because of recusals related to [her] prior employment at a Wall Street defense firm” and will continue to recuse herself from other cases because of her husband’s “ongoing employment at a Wall Street defense firm”.



On Tuesday, White defended herself, saying that she was proud of the agency’s achievements under her leadership, pointing to its “record year in enforcement and the Commission’s efforts in advancing more than 30 congressionally mandated rulemakings and other transformative policy initiatives to protect investors and strengthen our markets”.

“Senator Warren’s mischaracterization of my statements and the agency’s accomplishments is unfortunate, but it will not detract from the work we have done, and will continue to do, on behalf of investors,” White said in a statement.

The White House stood behind White’s appointment as the chairwoman of the SEC.

“The president does continue to believe that she is the right person for the job,” Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said during the daily press briefing. “The president does continue to believe that the reasons that he chose her, based on her experience and her values, continue to be important today.”

White has previously defended the work of her agency, noting that it is often limited by political gridlock and dependent on its budget.

With White at the helm, the SEC requested 23% increase in its funding from the 2014 budget, with the final price tag of $1.67bn for the year. However, the agency received only $1.35bn.

“The SEC’s current level of resources still presents significant challenges as we seek to keep pace with the increasing size and complexity of the securities markets and fulfill our broad mandates and responsibilities,” White said in June 2013.

What’s more, in January of 2014, Congress cut half of the $50m that the SEC had set aside for technology initiatives to beef up its tools to spot accounting fraud and illegal trades.