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Thomas Lauria: White House Treatened Bank with Press Corps

Posted on May 4, 2009

ABC’s Jake Tapper is reporting that Thomas Lauria, a lawyer and Global Practice Head of the Financial Restructuring and Insolvency Group at White & Case, is accusing the Obama administration of strong arm tactics against opponents of the Chrysler bankruptcy.

Thomas Lauria has told ABC News that, “Steve Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration’s Auto Industry Task Force, threatened one of the firms, an investment bank, that if it continued to oppose the administration’s
Thomas Lauria: Whte House Treatened Bank with Press Corps
Chrysler bankruptcy plan, the White House would use the White House press corps to destroy its reputation.”

Both the Obama administration and the investment bank, Perella Weinberg Partners, have disputed Thomas Lauria’s claims.

The astonishing part of Thomas Lauria’s claims is not that the Obama administration might play hardball with people and institutions that get in their way. Other Presidents have been just as ruthless and the Obama people, forged in the hot house of Chicago politics, are very adept at following Chicago rules. “If they come at you with a knife, pull a gun. If they put one of yours in the hospital, put one of theirs in the morgue.”

The astonishing part is that the Obama administration, if one is to believe Thomas Lauria, believes that it can rely on the White House press corps to do its bidding insofar as ruining the reputation of an opponent of the administration it is covering. Technically, the White House press corps does not work for the White House. (Source: associatedcontent.com)

White & Case’s Thomas Lauria: Lawyer for the Holdout Lenders

Thomas Lauria, head of the restructuring practice at White & Case, is in a tough spot: the lead lawyer for the group of holdout lenders that the Obama administration is blaming for pushing Chrysler into Chapter 11.

The group, as you know by now, refused to take 33 cents on the dollar for the approximately $1 billion in Chrysler debt they hold. The four biggest bank lenders to Chrysler–all recipients of federal bailout money–took that deal, drawing praise from Obama for their decision.

Now Lauria is vowing to fight. Specifically, he says the holdout lenders will challenge the planned sale of Chrysler’s prime assets to a new company controlled by the auto workers union and Fiat, according to Reuters. The lenders say the sale is an “end run” around established bankruptcy law that gives secured lenders priority over junior lenders (including the union) when it comes to getting repaid. (Source: here)

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