AOC tries to grill Wells Fargo's CEO on immigration and fossil fuel issues … ends up embarrassing himself

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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seemed to be looking forward to a comforting moment when Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan was questioned on Tuesday at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee and ended up embarrassed.

Sloan was brought before the commission by President Maxine Waters (D-CA) as part of an investigation into fraudulent misconduct by bank employees in recent years. But rather than focusing on issues such as creating fake accounts, AOC took a strange turn and accused Sloan of "funding the caging of kids" and asked about his responsibility for "damage caused by climate change".

First, she focuses on ICE:

At the beginning of his remarks, Ocasio-Cortez told Sloan: "I'm interested in human rights violations and environmental disasters that some say funded by your bank, Wells Fargo."

Ocasio-Cortez spoke about private prisons and for-profit immigration detention centers, asking Sloan: "Why was the bank involved in caging children and funding the school? caged children? "

"I do not know how to answer that question because we were not," Sloan replied. He added that Wells Fargo was involved in funding one of the private penitentiary companies "for a while", but "we are no longer."

Sloan, meanwhile, said: "I am not aware of the specific assertion you make, but we did not participate directly."

Ocasio-Cortez told Sloan, "These companies run private detention centers, run by ICE, which take care of caging children, but I will move on." (CNS)

And let's go to fossil fuels.

"So let's focus on the Dakota access pipeline, should Wells Fargo be held responsible for the damage caused by climate change because of fossil fuel financing and these projects?"

I do not know how you calculate that, parliamentarian, "said Sloan.

"Say, following spills," she told Sloan, "or when we have to reinvest in infrastructure, building dikes against the erosion of – infrastructure erosion, or cleanings, fires, etc.

"Related to this pipeline?" Sloan asked. "I'm not aware that there was anything you described."

"What about cleaning the leaks from the Dakota Access Pipeline?"

"I'm not aware of the leaks associated with the Dakota Access pipeline that you describe," said Sloan.

"So hypothetically, if there was a leak from the Dakota access pipeline, why should not Wells Fargo pay for the cleanup, since it financed the construction of the pipeline?" Ocasio-Cortez asked.

"Because we do not operate the pipeline," Sloan replied. "We are funding the pipeline company, and our responsibility is to ensure that this client is ready when it is borrowed – and we have a group of people in Wells Fargo, including a monitoring group of the company. environment led by one of my colleagues who were at the EPA– "

Ocasio-Cortez interrupted: "So, one question, why did Wells Fargo finance this pipeline when it was generally considered ecologically unstable?"

"Again, if we were one of the 17 or 19 banks to have funded this project, it's because our team looked at the environmental impact and we concluded that that Was a risk we were willing to take, "Sloan told Ocasio-Cortez. (CNS)

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