As per Melanie Sloan at the time Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former counsel for the House Judiciary Committee. “By contacting then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to request a meeting, allegedly for a group of minority-owned banks, but then arranging for only one bank – OneUnited, in which she had a financial interest – to attend, Rep. Waters violated House conflict of interest rules,”
Durring the same time period Waters asked the Treasury Department to hold the initial meeting, she had spoken to Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) about OneUnited, telling him that her husband previously had served on the board. Rep. Frank advised her to stay out of matters related to OneUnited. Watersgnored his advice and her chief of staff who coincidentally happenned to be her grandson, continued to work on behalf of OneUnited.
In 2008, Waters arranged meetings between Treasury Department officials and OneUnited Bank, in order for the bank to solicit federal funds. It had been heavily invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and its capital was “all but wiped out” after the U.S. government took them over. The bank received $12 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money thanks to Maxine.
In 2010, she came under an ethics investigation and was accused of a violation related to her efforts to help OneUnited Bank receive federal aid. Not only is Waters' husband a former director of OneUnited Bank but he retained hefty stock holdings and the bank’s executives were major contributors to Waters campaigns. The matter was 'investigated' by the House Democrats. In September, 2012 --- bada bing bada boom The House Ethics Committee completed a report clearing Waters of all ethics charges- nice hat trick.
As a congressional ethics panel, run by Democrats, prepared to launch their kangaroo court and mock trial of Maxine Waters, reports that the California lawmaker became embroiled in a different corruption scandal also involving her husband. The story claimed that a powerful lobbyist paid Waters’ husband $15,000 in “consulting fees” and in return as she co-sponsored a law aimed at saving a business that was among the lobbyist’s top clients. The IRS had determined that firm in question was a scam . Maxines measure would have overturned the federal ban and the scam business would continue raking in lucrative profits.
The firm in question acted as a middleman to help sellers finance down payments so that low-income buyers could qualify for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The lobbyist who paid Waters’ husband represented the nation’s largest such middleman which stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars if the ban wasn’t reversed.
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