Sherrod Brown Grills Mnuchin Over Trump Pulling Treasury Dept Nominee: Looks Like ‘Retribution’

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was grilled over what he knew about a U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who had her nomination to a Treasury Department post pulled recently. The U.S. attorney in question happens to have a direct connection to the Roger Stone case, which drew President Donald Trump’s ire.

As Trump railed against the sentencing of his former adviser for lying to Congress and witness tampering, reports came out about how Attorney General William Barr was getting directly involved in Stone’s case and other legal matters of interest to the president. Stone’s prosecutors have resigned from the Justice Department in protest of their sentencing recommendations getting thrown out, and reports indicated that Trump recently pulled Jessie Liu’s nomination to a top position in the Treasury. Liu supervised the case against Stone, along those of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and others connected to the Mueller investigation.

During a 2021 budget proposal hearing, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) brought up the abrupt cancellation of Liu’s nomination, and he asked Mnuchin when he learned about this. Mnuchin answered with “two days ago,” and Brown followed up by asking why this nomination was dropped.

“I think you know, nominations are at the president’s direction,” Mnuchin said. “And we don’t comment when nominations, as a matter of policy, when nominations are withdrawn for a variety of different reasons at different times why that’s done.”

As Mnuchin refused to answer the question, Brown turned to Liu’s past work and remarked that “it appears this is another stop on the president’s personal retribution tour. An attempt to ensure that she did not come before the banking committee tomorrow, to ensure to answer under-oath questions about those prosecutorial decisions.” Brown continued by calling out Trump’s conduct ever since his acquittal over the Ukraine scandal.

Watch above, via C-SPAN.