Jim Johnson Leading B. Obama's VP Vetting Team

The Washington Post reports that last month Barack Obama turned to James A. Johnson, a former Fannie Mae chief executive and Washington insider since the Carter administration, to lead the vetting of potential running mates for the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that he received more than $2 million in home loans that might have been below average market rates from Countrywide Financial, a partner of Fannie Mae and a leading purveyor of the kind of subprime mortgages that spawned a national housing crisis. As CEO of Fannie Mae, Johnson was the beneficiary of accounting in which Fannie Mae's earnings were manipulated so that executives could earn larger bonuses. The accounting manipulation for 1998 resulted in the maximum payouts to Fannie Mae's senior executives -- $1.9 million in Johnson's case -- when the company's performance that year would have otherwise resulted in no bonuses at all, according to reports in 2004 and 2006 by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. In a 2006 civil enforcement action against Fannie Mae, another agency, the securities and Exchange Commission, called the company's 1998 accounting "fraudulent" and said numbers were "intentionally manipulated to trigger management bonuses."

Obama is defending his choice of Jim Johnson to lead his vetting team, calling reports into Johnson's ties to the mortgage company Countrywide "a game." The only one who is playing games is Barack Obama. Not only do we find that he has another questionable associaton, but he is also a hypocrite that has attacked his opponents for connections to Countrywide. One example is David Plouffe of the Obama campaign critizing Clinton in March for taking contributions from Countrywide lobbyists. 'If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors." This is what Obama himself said about Countrywide Financial in April when running in Pennsylvania:

He also has Eric holder on his VP vetting team. As former deputy attorney general Eric Holder had a role in granting a pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich in the last days of the Clinton White House. In December 2000, as Rich's lawyers were closing in on the pardon, one of them, Jack Quinn, singled out Holder in an e-mail. "The greatest danger lies with the lawyers," Quinn wrote his co-counsels. "I have worked them hard and I am hopeful that E. Holder will be helpful to us."

Yet Barack claims these two "aren’t folks who are working for me, they’re not people who I have assigned to a particular job in a future administration." John McCain attacked Obama perfectly on this point saying, "It’s preposterous for Senator Obama to claim that the leader of his VP selection committee isn’t working for him. Barack Obama has castigated Countrywide Financial, but now that Jim Johnson has been exposed for taking sweetheart deals from Countrywide’s CEO - Obama is in a state of denial. It’s that brand of weak leadership and hypocrisy that shows why Barack Obama has no record of taking courageous stands or making change in Washington." Preposterous indeed.

Furthermore, how can Obama claim that Johnson and Holder's job "is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates" and that they aren't working for me?" Vetting for potential running mates is not a tangential or "simple" job. These people are not licking envelopes, they have a critical task in his campaign. Yet he pretends their job is simple and unimportant in his attempt to excuse his appointing them to the task. If these are the type of people he has working for him now, who will he have working for him in the White House? Tweet