Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is highlighting reports that Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin failed to disclose business holdings in his original required paperwork for his confirmation, saying these are the latest example of ethical challenges some of Trump’s nominees face.
The New York Democrat argued that the Senate has “never before” considered such an “ethically challenged” slate of Cabinet appointments and pointed to news that Mnuchin has amended his questionnaire to the Senate Finance Committee to account for business entities he hadn’t previously disclosed in an earlier submission.
“Mr. Mnuchin’s failure to disclose his Cayman Islands holdings just reeks of the swamp that the president-elect promised to drain on the campaign trail,” Schumer said.
Instead of draining the swamp, Schumer said, the incoming administration is “going to fill it up.”
Mnuchin is testifying before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday morning, and Democrats plan to grill him on his vast holdings and finances amounting to more than $150 million, which he maintains through several different trusts.
In the amended questionnaire sent to committee members early Thursday, Mnuchin acknowledged that he had previously failed to disclose his position as director of several companies, including Dune Capital International Ltd., which is based in the Cayman Islands, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Mnuchin admitted that he “inadvertently missed” these positions in preparing his original filing and updated his questionnaire to include $95 million in real estate assets, citing a misreading of the questionnaire, which asks nominees to report real estate assets, the WSJ reported.
Schumer seized on the new disclosures by Mnuchin as evidence that Republicans are trying to push the nominees through the Senate at a rapid clip to avoid additional public scrutiny.
“It’s no wonder that Republicans are trying to rush these nominees through the Senate, but the American people and Senate Democrats are not going to stand for it,” Schumer said in a statement. “In nominee after nominee they’re tolerating a dramatically lower bar for ethical standards, something Washington and America will soon regret.”
