FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dorothy Slater, [email protected]
A coalition of 23 organizations called on the Biden administration to withdraw its nomination of corporate attorney Neil MacBride as the Treasury Department’s General Counsel in a letter released today.
“As a private corporate attorney, MacBride defended fossil fuel companies, Wall Street giants, Big Tech monopolies, and a myriad of other corporate industries,” the groups wrote. “His past work fighting vigorously and successfully on behalf of corporations against the public interest disqualifies him from a role in the administration.”
Revolving Door Project Research Assistant Dorothy Slater said, “Biden needs to look past the fact that MacBride once counseled him in the Senate. What MacBride has done in the intervening years is effectively undermine every part of the Treasury Department’s issue portfolio on behalf of some of the most profitable companies on earth. Now he’s in line to advise the Treasury Department about what it can and can’t do. This is a clear cut case of hiring an arsonist to run the fire department, and Biden ought to be better than this.”
Slater wrote in the Daily Beast on Tuesday that “For MacBride to have fought so intentionally on behalf of Exxon against the department he is now expected to represent has gross implications for exactly which corporations he will recommend legal leniency for when on the job.” MacBride represented Exxon in protesting a $2 million fine brought by the Treasury Department itself when the company violated sanctions on Russia related to the 2014 invasion of Crimea.
MacBride has also represented Morgan Stanley and S&P in fraud cases related to the mortgage-backed securities which caused the 2008 global financial crisis. His biography at the corporate firm Davis Polk, until recently, boasted about representing Fortune 100 companies in global corruption investigations.
Letter signatories include the Center for Popular Democracy, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth US, Businesses for a Livable Climate, and the Strong Economy for All Coalition.
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