Politico reports:
To many in the foreign policy community, Tom Donilon’s selection Friday as national security adviser to President Barack Obama was a deserving reward for a consummate professional, a corporate lawyer who worked his way up through the foreign policy ranks over the years and is credited with holding the National Security Council together during the uncertain leadership of James Jones.
But one part of Donilon’s résumé that went unmentioned in the Rose Garden Friday — the six years he spent as a top executive of Fannie Mae at the height of the housing boom — made him a problematic choice for any Obama administration job that requires Senate confirmation.
Donilon left the firm as it was mired in an accounting scandal in 2005, three years before Fannie Mae’s spectacular collapse when the mortgage market imploded in 2008. Investigators never accused Donilon of wrongdoing in the accounting scandal, but Fannie ultimately paid $400 million to the federal government to settle charges that the company misstated its earnings between 1998 and 2004. The government sued three top Fannie Mae executives to recover millions in bonuses based on the allegedly falsified reports, but Donilon was not among them.
Tom Donilon is an expert on the subject of accounting fraud. Barack Obama sure knows how to pick a staff! You'll want to read this one just for this great line from Politico:
One friend of Donilon conceded his résumé isn’t the classical one for a national security adviser.
Imagine that.
