“Sources inside FinCEN told BuzzFeed News that they were initially instructed not to hand over financial documents on certain individuals. The directive, these sources said, came from senior Treasury officials in the General Counsel’s Office.” In my /1 buzzfeednews.com/article/emmalo…
Brief tenure at FinCEN, and after 18 years at DOJ (& before that 2 yrs in private practice), I found the attorneys serving in FinCEN Office of Chief Counsel and Main Treasury’s General Counsel’s Office to be among the most risk-averse, conservative lawyers I’d ever worked with./2
This also says that FinCEN declined a committee request for an expert last year to help them analyze documents b/c “Treasury did not want to be seen as playing a part in the committee’s investigation.” Now, the request will likely be approved by Ken Blanco, the new Director. /3
In some ways this last point doesn’t surprise me because when the requests originally were made, there wasn’t a permanent Director in place, but Blanco has been there as the permanent career Director since late 2017, so this could have been corrected earlier than now. In /4
General, executive branch agencies don’t rush to turn over documents - particularly law enforcement or Nat Sec sensitive ones - to the Hill. It’s always a push & pull. But I do believe that FinCEN would be cooperating fully with requests from Special Counsel Mueller & FBI. END
