Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Wells Fargo has cut checks to congressional questioners' campaigns

Helped by the Republicans on the Supreme Court who ruled that limits on political donations by corporations are illegal because they claimed companies are people, and limits on donations are a curtailment of free speech.



Jon Marino
Sept. 20, 2016

John Stumpf, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Wells Fargo & Co.
No good answers for WFC's Stumpf: Pro
6 Hours Ago | 04:11

It's a different spin on the system of "checks and balances."

Wells Fargo has cut checks to the congressional campaigns of politicians on both sides of the aisle, including some who are questioning CEO John Stumpf on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

The Wells Fargo and Company Employee PAC has made donations to 20 of 22 members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, including ranking Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, according to a review of Federal Election Commission data.

Among the GOP committee members, only Louisiana Sen. David Vitter did not receive a donation from Wells Fargo's PAC, and among Democrats, only Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has not been the recipient of any PAC cash.

CEO Stumpf has also donated personally to several senators who will grill him on Wells Fargo's fake account scandal on Tuesday morning.

Wells Fargo is facing pressure not just in the Senate, but also an investigation in the House of Representatives, in the ongoing fallout from the bank's being fined by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies two weeks ago.

Federal prosecutors also began an investigation into practices at Wells' consumer banking division that led to more than 5,000 staffers being fired after generating hundreds of thousands of fake accounts, evidently because they sought to meet performance goals. [And were threatened with being fired if they didn't meet those goals.]

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