President Obama said in an interview on CNBC today that the White House had no advance notice of or involvement in the SEC’s civil fraud suit against Goldman Sachs.
“The SEC is an entirely independent agency that we have no day-to-day control over. And they never discussed with us anything with respect to the charge that would be brought. So this notion that somehow there would be any attempt to interfere in an independent agency is completely false,” he said.
“We found out about it on CNBC,” Obama smiled.
WATCH:
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) had said yesterday that the timing of the suit was “very suspect” — and eight Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee demanded information from the SEC over whether everything was proper.
Obama also addressed the issue of his ex-counsel, Gregory Craig, being hired to defend Goldman.
“We have the toughest ethics rules that any president’s ever had. And the one thing that he knows is that he cannot talk to the White House. He cannot lobby the White House. Once he left the White House, he cannot in any way use his former position to have any influence on us,” Obama said.
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