Warren Offers Surprising Choice for SEC Vacancy

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is supporting a somewhat unusual candidate to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): a member of her staff who is married to an attorney that represents some of the nation’s largest banks.

 

According to a Washington Examiner report, Warren said she is “staunchly backing” Bharat Ramamurti, her senior banking counsel, to fill the SEC vacancy set aside for a Democrat. However, Ramamurti is married to Paige Ammons, a counsel at Washington law firm Buckley Sandler, whose clients have included Bank of America, BB&T, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo – not exactly the companies that Sen. Warren admires. Ammons also used her LinkedIn profile to highlight her work representing a “former senior executive of Freddie Mac in securities fraud investigation by SEC regarding financial disclosures of mortgage losses, resulting in Staff's decision not to recommend enforcement action.”

 

Warren offered no public comment on the potential conflicts of interest in having a member of the SEC married to a practicing attorney for the nation’s largest banks.