HuffPO-
Top law enforcement officers from most of the 50 states gathered last week in Washington, D.C., for the annual spring meeting of state attorneys general, where the hot topic was the $25 billion foreclosure settlement finally filed in federal court on Monday.
More than a dozen state and federal officials who crafted the deal, which resolves charges that banks wrongfully foreclosed on homeowners, say it is the most ambitious of its kind ever reached, far outstripping the complexity and political machinations of the decade-old case against the giant tobacco companies.
But instead of high-fives and fist-bumps, officials, who had sniped at each other — and at the deal — for the better part of a year, tried to come to grips with the aftermath. The deal had to overcome disagreements between the banks and government officials, and between liberal Democrats and Tea Party-backed Republicans.
“It was like the Battle of Verdun, every square inch was fought over,” said George Jepsen, the Connecticut attorney general, of the 16 months of negotiations between federal officials, state attorneys general and five major financial institutions — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) — over the foreclosures and a host of other nasty “servicing” abuses.
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