POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON AUGUST 17, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY
When Darrell Issa took over the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after the Republican landslide in the 2010 midterms, most people assumed that his rhetoric about restoring the proper role of oversight was nothing but a philosophic cover for attacking Barack Obama and his administration. A new report this week shows that Issa’s job was a lot broader and a lot tougher than people imagined. His predecessor, the now-retiring Edolphus Towns (D-NY),covered up his own ties to Countrywide Mortgage and those of his colleagues and their aides in Congress while supposedly investigating how the defunct lender escaped scrutiny for so many years of negligent and fraudulent operation:
A Democratic committee chairman overrode his own subpoena three years ago in an investigation of former subprime mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. to exclude records showing that he, other House members and congressional aides got VIP discounted loans from the company, documents show.
The procedure to keep the names secret was devised by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y. In 2003, the 15-term congressman had two loans processed by Countrywide’s VIP section, which was established to give discounts to favored borrowers.
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