After an
effort to purge lobbyists from his quickly arranged transition
team, President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a “drain the
swamp” message, is set to promote another swamp-dweller to a high-ranking
position in his administration.
Trump is
set to announce that Steven Mnuchin will be his Treasury secretary,
per a recommendation from his own transition team, the Associated Press reports.
Mnuchin served as Trump’s national finance chairman
during the campaign after a long history in private investment banking and on
Wall Street.
Prior to
joining the team, Mnuchin worked at Goldman Sachs for 17 years and OneWest
Bank, which got into hot water for a series of attempted home foreclosures
after the 2008 housing bubble burst.
He also
founded RatPac-Dune Entertainment, a movie-production company that bankrolled Avatar,
as well as other films. After OneWest was sold to CIT Group in 2015, Mnuchin
went on to serve on its board and became the chairman and chief executive of
the private investment firm Dune Capital Management.
During
his tenure at OneWest, the bank was responsible for attempting to remove
families from their homes against the families’ wills.
A New
York judge erased $525,000 in mortgage debt owed by a Long Island couple to
OneWest Bank in 2009 because the institution was harassing them. Suffolk County
Judge Jeffrey Spinner blasted the bank’s “harsh, repugnant and repulsive” acts as they
attempted to toss the family out on the street around Thanksgiving.
