Eric Holder cuts a sweet deal with Chase's Jamie Dimon, even bypassing federal judges,
while insider attorney Alayne Fleischmann peeps out
of her whistleblower strongbox window in dismay.
This Rolling Stone article tells the story of the Chase insider who watched in horror as Holder helped Chase cover up its crimes. Eventually her name emerged, and Matt writes her story. As a much smaller kind of whistleblower, I can relate to her frustration and disillusionment as she watched the DOJ--that I thought was the last bastion of justice remaining in the US government-- cave in to corporate interests.
"I thought, 'I swear, Eric Holder is gas-lighting me,' " she says.Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106#ixzz3Is8WoHfg
Ask her where the crime was, and Fleischmann will point out exactly how her bosses at JPMorgan Chase committed criminal fraud: It's right there in the documents...
She believes the proof is easily there for all the elements of the crime as defined by federal law – the bank made material misrepresentations, it made material omissions, and it did so willfully and with specific intent, consciously ignoring warnings from inside the firm and out.
She'd like to see something done about it, emphasizing that there still is time. The statute of limitations for wire fraud, for instance, has not run out, and she strongly believes there's a case there, against the bank's executives. She has no financial interest in any of this, no motive other than wanting the truth out. But more than anything, she wants it to be over.
In today's America, someone like Fleischmann – an honest person caught for a little while in the wrong place at the wrong time – has to be willing to live through an epic ordeal just to get to the point of being able to open her mouth and tell a truth or two. And when she finally gets there, she still has to risk everything to take that last step. "The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it," Fleischmann says. "But they're wrong about that."Good for her, and great for her that it's finally out. But the big-picture ending still stings. She hopes otherwise, but the likely final verdict is a Pyrrhic victory."
And Alayne and Matt are now doing the cool-media rounds. They are so good-looking, and this is their moment in the spotlight, but they still are still outsiders to the power structure.
In an MSNBC interview quoted in Salon, Alayne said: “That’s the key point with these settlements,” she said. “They make it look like they’re hard cases but they’re not. … There are emails. There are reports that were ignored. There are vendor reports that were ignored. There are emails from diligence managers, from myself. There’s a letter that sets out exactly who did what and what’s wrong in our diligence process and how that’s going to cause problems in the security....
...I think part of the problem is [Chase execs] know they can bring in their lawyers and their PR and their lobbyists and make it go away. So as long as they know they can do that, why would they stop?”
[sounds SOOO FAMILIAR] Oh Richard! Soooo familiar!
Question: "Just where do we see equality before the law in this latest new-0ld story?"