by Helen Tansey
January 25, 2012

One can’t help but be suspicious about the timing of Lanny Breuer’s, Assistant Attorney General for DOJ’s Criminal Division, recent decision to step down. Breuer was responsible for holding accountable the TBTF banking thieves who singlehandedly imploded America’s economy not to mention the rest of the global economy in 2008. Breuer’s track record, after four years on the job, speaks for itself — not one senior bankster has been prosecuted for the Crime of the Century yet an estimated 3000 loan originators, borrowers and other mortgage lending staff have. Obviously, Breuer’s modus operandi was to go after the little guy and by every available means protect the “Godfathers” of banking.

Contrast Breuer’s dismal record with then William K. Black’s, the man who lead the investigation into the 1980’s Savings and Loan debacle. Then nearly 1000 banksters were arrested with a third of them being top executives, yet under Breuer’s watch, not one senior executive, member of a board or politician who by all accounts condoned the packaging, bundling and then selling of fraudulent mortgages not to mention the obscene sums of money made, has been bothered to answer in a court of law for any crime.

In a recent speech before the New York Bar Association Breuer suggests “white collar cases literally keep me up at night” and when asked why by PBS’s Frontline Martin Smith “is that really the job of a prosecutor to worry about anything other than simply pursuing justice?” Breuer responded by stating “if I bring a case against institution A, and as a result of bringing that case there’s some huge economic effect, if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly counter parties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this or affected badly it’s a factor we need to know and understand.”

Read that statement again.

Breuer tells us that he hasn’t gone after the banking executives, their boards or even complicit politicians out of fear of the potential fallout and/or ramifications to the banking business at large. I guess in Breuer’s world he see’s himself as the “hired gun” making sure none of the leading criminals who cooked up, implemented and protected the mortgage ponzi scheme is held responsible due to market ramifications.

This is a crime in and of itself. This one man has bought these criminal banksters four years to destroy evidence of the crime. These banksters have enjoyed their liberty, prospered and indulged themselves w/millions of dollars in bonuses all the while the people they screwed have lost everything. I don’t see Breuer losing any sleep over them!

Was Lanny Breuer the “hired gun” placed by the Obama puppeteers to head up the DOJ’s Criminal Division to thwart all investigations into the senior management and boards of the TBTF banks? Sure looks that way from where I’m sitting and if I were one of the TBTF banksters I’d certainly be sharing my 2012 multi-million dollar bonus with Breuer and his family. The man obviously did the job they tasked him to do, he did it well and thank goodness for the rest of us he’s leaving. It will be telling who Obama appoints to fill Breuer’s shoes; especially since the TBTF senior executives bet on the wrong horse in 2012.

As suggested at the beginning of this article, Breuer’s resignation appears rather sudden, and I’m left wondering if the below PBS Frontline investigative report by Martin Smith had anything to do with it. If after watching this hour long piece of stellar investigative journalism you don’t see Breuer as the banksters “hired gun” well, then nothing will convince you. Smith in less than 60 minutes produces testimony from Whistleblowers who have only recently been contacted by the DOJ detailing how the mortgage fraud took place, how these senior executives purposely ignored all of the warnings from their management, and how the Senate Judiciary Committee presented solid evidence of fraud to the DOJ only to be shelved by Breuer and his colleagues.

THE UNTOUCHABLES: FRONTLINE investigates why Wall Street’s leaders have escaped prosecution for any fraud related to the sale of bad mortgages.

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Martin Smith’s team of investigators also wrote several accompanying pieces for this story which we encourage you to read. They can be found by clicking http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/untouchables/