EXCLUSIVE BOOK EXCERPT: Jeff Connaughton’s “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins”

Here’s one 23-year Washington veteran (and friend of The RP) who became so frustrated by the Obama Justice Department’s failure to make Wall Street investigations a top priority that he moved to Savannah to write a book about it.

Jeff Connaughton, a former Biden Senate staffer and Clinton White House lawyer, most recently served as chief of staff to then Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), who chaired two oversight hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee on financial fraud prosecution — the first in December 2009 and a second in September 2010.

Check out this review in Main Justice, and read an exclusive excerpt of “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins” below:

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“For me, what is deplorable is not the Justice Department’s failure to bring charges, but its failure to be adequately dedicated and organized either to make the cases or reach a fully informed judgment that no case could be made.

Given the inadequate effort, as President Obama virtually admitted in his 2012 State of the Union address when he announced the formation of yet another task force (which remains an ill-staffed farce), we’ll never know what an appropriate effort would have produced. And that has resulted in the appearance of a double standard.

If the explanation for the inadequate effort is corruption (the administration could not afford to anger Wall Street contributors), the revolving door, or a belief that the health of the financial industry is more important than legal accountability, then we have an actual double standard.

I don’t know the explanation, but in terms of faith in our institutions, it may not matter whether the double standard is real or apparent. That double standard has torn the social and moral fabric of our country in a way I find to be unforgivable.”