Senators: Justice Department 'aggressively evasive' on 'too big to jail'

A bipartisan pair of senators is accusing the Justice Department of avoiding their questions about why officials at the country’s biggest banks avoided prosecution following the financial crisis.

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had written Justice officials in January, seeking answers for why certain Wall Street executives were, in their words, “too big to jail.”

But the government’s response, the two senators said, were vague, and the department did not tell Brown and Grassley whom it consulted when it made decisions on whom to prosecute.

The two senators had openly questioned whether officials at the largest banks had avoided prosecution because of their size and influence. 

“The Justice Department’s response is aggressively evasive,” Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Brown said in a Friday comment. “It does not answer our questions.”

Brown and Grassley’s efforts underscore that, more than four years after the fiscal crisis and more than two years after the Dodd-Frank overhaul of financial regulations, lawmakers still have their concerns about the country’s biggest banks. 

The two senators, in their latest statement on the issue, say the Justice Department’s only clear statement was that it regularly consults banks and regulators. 

“So either regulators are urging the Department to take a soft approach, or the Department is easily swayed by misleading Wall Street arguments,” Brown and Grassley said. 

“We’ve conveyed our dissatisfaction, so the Justice Department is aware that it still owes us a complete response. The public deserves the facts about the Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute big banks and senior bank executives.”

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