Giannoulias launched Senate bid from failed family bank

Alexi Giannoulias has tried mightily to distance himself from the failure of the family bank that cost taxpayers almost $400 million in deposit insurance payouts earlier this year, but the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Illinois didn’t always take that kind of care.  The Weekly Standard discovered that Giannoulias actually launched his Senate campaign from the offices of his family’s bank, tying the campaign to its collapse:

Leaving aside a New York Times report that Giannoulias himself was responsible for the risky loans that brought down the bank and cost the FDIC $394 million, Giannoulias supporters hit the same refrain as the candidate: he hasn’t been at the bank in over four years.

Particularly Senator Dick Durbin: “Durbin says Giannoulias has not been involved with the family bank in four years,” according to WBEZ’s City Room. “For four years, Alexi had no contact with this bank,” Durbin recently told Fox Chicago.

It’s one thing for Giannoulias to embellish his own record, but quite another for Durbin. Is it possible that Durbin just doesn’t know what’s going on?

When Giannoulias launched his Senate campaign, a Democratic Party website listed Alexi for Illinois’s address as 900 W. Van Buren in Chicago …

And guess what else used that address?  Broadway Bank had its headquarters at the same address, the Giannoulias family’s bank that Alexi helped run into the ground with questionable loans to crime figures.  It’s the same address that the bank had when federal regulators seized it this year.

Dick Durbin is not to blame in this situation.  It’s doubtful that Durbin spent any time fact-checking claims from Giannoulias about his connections to the bank, but instead relied on Giannoulias’ word on the subject.  Obviously, Alexi burned Durbin on this point, and gave Illinois voters a lesson about his credibility and his truthfulness on the subject.

It’s also rather remarkable that the President of the United States started off his remarks today about how Wall Street and bankers got the best of the American economy at the expense of the taxpayers — and at the same time, his own party is nominating a candidate to the Senate whose own bank had to get rescued by taxpayers for making irresponsible lending decisions and extracting needed capital from its assets.

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