The Obama administration is "shaking down" JPMorgan Chase, using Attorney General Eric Holder as the "sheriff of Nottingham" in making the bank fork over a $13 billion civil settlement, says Peter Morici, a University of Maryland professor who teaches international business.
"The president is shaking down JPMorgan. There's no other word for it," Morici told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
Editor's Note: Will This Video Get Obama Fired? See the Evidence!
"They started investigating these mortgage-related securities fraud[s] . . . about the time that Morgan . . . decided not to support the president in his re-election campaign. How about that?"
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Last week, JPMorgan Chase reached a tentative $13 billion agreement with the U.S. Justice Department.
The settlement will reportedly settle government agency probes into bad mortgage loans JPMorgan Chase sold to investors before the nation's financial crisis.
Morici says the Justice Department targeted JPMorgan Chase even though "most of the sins were committed by companies it acquired at the behest of the Bush Treasury Department," including Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.
"It's just amazing how Eric Holder exercises prosecutorial discretion. I like to think of the president these days as Henry VIII, but Eric Holder is a more insidious and less enviable character ... He's the Sheriff of Nottingham," Morici said Tuesday.
"He's basically going out and doing the bidding ... He is a capable lawyer, but unfortunately has a very political agenda these days."
Morici, former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission, thinks the purge is far from over.
"You can count on more shakedowns. It would be a felony for me to, for example, threaten you with fraud to get the upper hand in a civil complaint, but not so the attorney general," he said.
He said the targeting of JPMorgan could end up seeing it dismembered into smaller businesses.
"It's clear that Eric Holder is going after [JPMorgan Chief Executive] Jamie Dimon much the way [Attorney General] Robert Kennedy went after [union leader] Jimmy Hoffa. That was an obsession with Robert Kennedy, and maybe that was justified in those days, but Jamie Dimon?" Morici said.
"They're paying a huge fine to a cash-hungry treasury. They're also giving the president money to spread around for political purposes. Four billion [dollars] for consumers who were hurt by basically fraudulent mortgages.
Editor's Note: Will This Video Get Obama Fired? See the Evidence!
"A lot of those homeowners really committed fraud. They're the ones who lied on the mortgage applications. They're the ones that took out loans they had no business taking out, all at the behest of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who's also getting paid off. This whole thing is a travesty of justice."
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