Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

We have yet another casualty in the vetting wars:

Democratic sources say that H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.

….Democratic sources said that an issue arose in the final stages of the vetting process.

Cohen had risen to the top after the withdrawal last week of expected deputy treasury secretary pick Annette Nazareth. As one source put it, “it’s back to the drawing board.”

Without knowing what the “issue” was, I guess there’s no way to comment on this.  But if it didn’t come up until the final stages of the vetting process, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s substantively minor but politically dangerous, the kind of thing that grandstanding senators will turn into a cause célèbres even though they know it’s fundamentally trivial.  And when they’re done, they’ll go back to asking why Obama isn’t taking the financial crisis more seriously.

Bah.  Get the Senate out of this whole process.  Let ’em confirm cabinet heads and leave it at that.  Do they really need to pretend to care about every deputy and assistant deputy too?

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate