WASHINGTON — The Senate ethics panel cleared Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad on Friday of breaking rules by getting mortgages through a VIP program but scolded them for not being more careful to avoid the appearance of sweetheart deals.
The Select Committee on Ethics told Dodd of Connecticut and Conrad of North Dakota in separate letters that it found “no substantial credible evidence” after a year-long investigation that their mortgages from Countrywide Financial Corp. broke Senate gift rules.
The two influential Democrats got their mortgages through a VIP program for those designated as “friends” of then-Countrywide chief executive Angelo Mozilo.
The committee said participants in the program “were often offered quicker, more efficient loan processing and some discounts,” but it also found that those borrowers didn’t necessarily get the best financial deal available. And in both Dodd’s and Conrad’s cases, the panel said the loans they received would have been available to a wide variety of borrowers with comparable financial profiles.
Both senators have said that at the time the mortgages were being written, they didn’t know they were getting special deals.
At an afternoon news conference, Dodd said he was “pleased and grateful” with the committee’s conclusions, adding: “There was no sweetheart or special deal. The allegations have always been false.”
The fifth-term Democrat, whose 2010 re-election bid has been damaged by the mortgage scandal, also acknowledged having mishandled the allegations, waiting for months to address them in detail or release documents on his loans.
“I think (that) contributed to people’s cynicism and distrust, that maybe I wasn’t telling the truth. And so I blame myself for that. That was a huge mistake I made, and I paid a price for it,” Dodd said.
Conrad said the ethics panel’s finding “confirms what I have said all along: I did not ask for or receive any preferential pricing on my loans.”
