The White House on Thursday declined to get in the middle of a fight over whether the FBI should release documents related to investigations into possible criminal behavior by financial institutions that led to the housing and economic crisis in late 2007.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has called for the release of those papers, and wrote FBI Director James Comey to ask about those investigations, none of which led to criminal charges against businesses or individuals.
But White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Comey will have to decide whether to comply, independent of input from the Obama administration.
Her letter does “underscore how important it is for us to learn from the mistakes in our past and to build a financial system and build safeguards in our financial system that won’t put taxpayers on the hook” for poor decisions by Wall Street executives and traders, Earnest said.
Warren’s letter comes on the eighth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros., the iconic brokerage that sparked the crumbling of so many financial institutions that the administration of President George W. Bush and Congress decided they had no choice but to bail out banks, insurance companies and brokerages.
Warren specifically wants to know why none of the executives or corporations that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission referred to the Justice Department for suspected securities laws violations were prosecuted.
Warren said Comey’s decision to share internal investigatory documents into the probe of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as a reason why the FBI should share its internal papers dealing with the financial crisis.
“These new standards present a compelling case for public transparency around the fate of the FCIC referrals,” she wrote.
