More About Newt's Work For GSE Coming To Light

[g5000]

Newt Gingrich repeatedly claims he was not a "lobbyist" for Freddie Mac. He usually follows up such a statement with a claim that he did not speak to Congress about Freddie Mac until 2008, at which time he told Congress not to give the GSEs any money.

He no longer makes the claim he warned Freddie Mac that what they were doing was "insane". You can click on the second link in my signature to see his lying in full bloom.

When Newt says he is not a "lobbyist", he is being disingenuous in the extreme. He is using the legal definition of a "lobbyist" so that he can squirm out of the taint on a technicality.

This is how he distracts from the fact he did work for Freddie Mac and advised their top lobbyist how to talk to Congress.

So while Newt did not talk directly to Congress, he certainly was part of the lobbying team which did.

Freddie Mac hired Gingrich as it reshaped strategy | Reuters

Within months after taking over as chief lobbyist at mortgage lender Freddie Mac in 1999, Mitchell Delk hired a prominent Washington insider to advise him on how to build support among conservatives on Capitol Hill: Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives.

A key part of Delk's strategy, as outlined in Federal Election Commission records, was to build goodwill in Congress by holding fundraising events for influential members of House and Senate committees that had oversight of Freddie Mac.

Gingrich had experience in such matters as an architect of GOPAC, one of the Republican Party's most important political action committees.

But the contract, together with the FEC records describing Delk's revamping of Freddie Mac's lobbying shop, sheds light on how Gingrich could avoid the lobbyist label and still be valuable to the mortgage lender as a strategist.

Gingrich's contract says the former House speaker would work with Delk and other Freddie Mac officials on "strategic planning and public policy."

And, it calls on Gingrich to contribute to the lender's "corporate planning and business goals."

"He was a consultant for us, and ... not a lobbyist," Freddie Mac spokesman Doug Duvall said, declining to comment further on the lender's arrangement with Gingrich.

Gingrich's campaign has offered few specifics about his work for Freddie Mac, for which he earned as much as $1.8 million during two contract periods. It said late last year that part of his job was to help Freddie Mac build bridges to conservatives.

Gingrich joined Delk's government affairs shop at a time when the former Freddie Mac senior vice president was hiring several former members of Congress and congressional aides for his lobbying team.

At the time, conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill were seeking regulations to rein in the profits of government-sponsored lenders such as Freddie Mac.

So Gingrich was hired to help undermine the conservative efforts to rein in the GSEs!

Gingrich signed a second contract with Freddie Mac in 2006. The lender ended its relationship with outside consultants in 2008, when the U.S. Treasury placed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in conservatorship.

Republicans have blamed the government-sponsored lenders, which sustained $14.9 billion in losses when the U.S. housing market crashed, for a major role in the subprime lending crisis.

I want you to click on the first link in my signature. It is the transcript of a meeting Gingrich had with Freddie Mac employees in 2007 in which he praised their work to the skies.

Since it is on the internet archive, you may have to copy and past the link into the Wayback Machine's home page to get to it.

But read it.

If you are a Republican conservative who thinks the GSEs played a big part in the economic meltdown, then you should know what kind of man is passing himself as a hero who tried to stop them.

He is worse than a bald faced liar. He is part of the enterprise that brought the whole house of cards down.

 

[GuyPinestra]

I don't know why you bother, anyone who supports Newk 'The Puke' Gingrinch is going to make excuses for his bald-faced lying just like they have made excuses for his serial adultery. They blithely follow their Pied Piper all the way down to the sea, which would be fine with me except for the fact that they're dragging the rest of us along for the swim.