A Brief History from the Blacked-Out Wikipedia Page of Chris Dodd, Politician for Hire

Dodd’s 2008 Presidential campaign bid was heavily funded by the financial services industry, which is regulated by committees Dodd chaired in the Senate.

In his role as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Dodd proposed a program in June 2008 that would assist troubled sub-prime mortgage lenders such as Countrywide Financial in the wake of the United States housing bubble’s collapse. Condé Nast Portfolio reported allegations that in 2003 Dodd had refinanced the mortgages on his homes in Washington, D.C. and Connecticut through Countrywide Financial and had received favorable terms due to being placed in the “Friends of Angelo” VIP program, so named for Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Dodd received mortgages from Countrywide at allegedly below-market rates on his Washington, D.C. and Connecticut homes. Dodd had not disclosed the below-market mortgages in any of six financial disclosure statements he filed with the Senate or Office of Government Ethics since obtaining the mortgages in 2003.

During the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, Dodd denied rumors that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in financial crisis. He called the firms “fundamentally strong”, said they were in “sound situation” and “in good shape” and to “suggest they are in major trouble is not accurate”. In early September, after the firms continued to report huge losses, Secretary Paulson announced a federal takeover of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Dodd expressed skepticism of the action. Dodd was the number one recipient in Congress of campaign funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In February 2009, Kevin Rennie, a columnist at the Hartford Courant, ran an op-ed concerning Dodd’s acquisition of his vacation home in Roundstone, Ireland. The article alleged that Dodd’s former partner in buying the home had ties to disgraced Bear Stearns principal Edward Downe, Jr. who has since been convicted of insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission. After paying an $11 million fine for his role in the scam, Downe later obtained a pardon in the waning days of the Bill Clinton administration. The controversial pardon was granted after Dodd lobbied Clinton on Downe’s behalf. Dodd’s letter to the President said, “Mr. President, Ed Downe is a good person, who is truly sorry for the hurt he caused others.”

From the fall of 2008 through early 2009, the United States government spent nearly $170 Billion to assist failing insurance giant, AIG. AIG then spent $165 million of this money to hand out executive “retention” bonuses to its top executives. Public outrage ensued over this perceived misuse of taxpayer dollars. After supporting an amendment to limit excessive executive pay in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Dodd withdrew it at the request of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers and then lied about it. Dodd retreated from his original statement that he did not know how the amendment was changed. Dodd was criticized by many in the Connecticut media for the apparent flip-flop. In a March 20, 2009 editorial the New Haven Register called Dodd “a lying weasel.” The same day, Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green called on Dodd not to seek re-election in 2010.

Dodd received over $223,000 from AIG employees, many of whom were Connecticut residents, for his recent campaigns. On March 30, 2009, it was reported that former AIG Financial Products head Joseph Cassano personally solicited contributions from his employees in Connecticut via an e-mail in fall 2006 suggesting that the contributions were related to Dodd’s ascension to the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee.

In February 2011, despite “repeatedly and categorically insisting that he would not work as a lobbyist,” Dodd was identified by The New York Times as the likely replacement for Dan Glickman as chairman and chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The hiring was officially announced on March 1, 2011.