Watch Elizabeth Warren question Ben Carson at HUD confirmation hearing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihsF-bltgTU
Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent 35 questions to Housing and Urban Development secretary nominee Ben Carson earlier this week. But her first question Thursday at Carson’s confirmation hearing was not on that list.
Instead, the Massachusetts senator used her question to make a point about President-elect Donald Trump.
“I just want to get an answer to I think a simple yes-or-no question,” Warren told the retired neurosurgeon, Trump’s pick to lead the agency overseeing housing policy.
‘If you are confirmed to lead HUD, you’ll be responsible for issuing billions of dollars in grants and loans to help develop housing and provide a lot of housing-related services,” Warren said. “Now housing development is an area in which President-elect Trump and his family have significant business interests. Can you assure me that not a single taxpayer dollar that you give out will financially benefit the president-elect or his family?”
Carson replied that his actions are “driven by a sense of morals and values” and that he would “absolutely not play favorites for anyone.”
Warren then pressed him whether he could “assure us that not one dollar would go to benefit the president-elect or his family.”
Carson repeated that he wouldn’t do anything that would benefit any particular family.
“I will manage things in a way that benefits the American people,” he said. “That is going to be the goal. If there happens to be an extraordinarily good program that’s working for millions of people and it turns out that someone that you’re targeting is going to gain $10 from it, am I going to say ‘No, the rest of you Americans can’t have it? I think logic and common sense probably would be the best way.”
Warren replied that she appreciated Carson’s “good faith,” but did not appear interested in his answer.
“The problem is that you can’t assure us that HUD money—not of $10 varieties, but of multi-million-dollar varieties—will not end up in the president-elect’s pockets,” she said, noting Trump’s refusal to put his assets in a “true blind trust.”
In a press conference Wednesday, Trump said he would be turning over the management of his company to his two adult sons, but would not be divesting his assets. Sheri Dillon, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said a truly blind trust would be impossible due to the name recognition of the Trump brand.
“President Trump can’t un-know he owns Trump Tower,” she said.
In order to create a “blind” trust, past presidents typically have had to liquidate assets that could pose a conflict. This would most likely require Trump to sell his vast real estate empire, but Dillon said Wednesday that he could “not be expected to destroy the business he built.”
But Warren insisted Thursday that Trump’s current arrangement rings conflict-of-interest alarm bells. Government ethics experts have also said the president-elect’s plan is inadequate.
“The only way that the American people can know that the president is working in their best interest, and not in his own, is if he divests and puts his assets in a true blind trust,” Warren told Carson, plugging a recent bill she co-sponsored, which would force Trump to divest.
According to Politico, the bill has a slim chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress.
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