Joe Biden’s nomination for Comptroller of the Currency went down in flames on Wednesday after five moderate Democrats voiced their opposition in a phone call with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
According to Axios, Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), all members of the banking panel, along with Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), said they would not support Saule Omarova, Biden’s radical pick to regulate banks.
Their opposition to her nomination effectively kills any chance Omarova had of being confirmed.
Omarova was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, and won the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship at Moscow State University before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
She is currently a law professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she focuses on financial regulation and corporate governance.
Her far-left leanings have raised alarm bells among Republicans in congress.
Omarova reportedly joined a Marxist Facebook group in 2019, and said earlier this year that she wants oil and gas companies to go bankrupt to tackle climate change.
In a Canadian documentary released in 2019, she referred to the financial services industry as “a quintessential a—hole industry.”
And according to a police report uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon, Omarova stole hundreds of dollars of merchandise from a discount retail store in May of 1995 when she was 28-years-old.
During a a Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing last week, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told Omarova that he could not think of a nominee more poorly suited for the banking position than her.
Biden officials are still publicly supporting Omarova even though they know she faces nearly impossible odds for confirmation, Axios reported.
“The White House continues to strongly support her historic nomination,” a White House official told the news outlet.
“Saule Omarova is eminently qualified for this position,” the official said. “She has been treated unfairly since her nomination with unacceptable red-baiting from Republicans like it’s the McCarthy era.”