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Trump and his familiar Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin
“The Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans’ relief checks out from under them.”
President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department has given U.S. banks a green light to seize a portion or all of the one-time $1,200 coronavirus relief payments meant to help Americans cope with financial hardship and instead use the money to pay off individuals’ outstanding debts—a move consumer advocates decried as cruel and unacceptable.
“These payments are supposed to help individuals and families put food on the table during this crisis, not enrich debt collectors.”
—Maura Healey, Massachusetts Attorney General
“The Treasury Department effectively blessed this activity on a webinar with banking officials last Friday,” The American Prospect‘s David Dayen reported Tuesday.
In an audio recording from the webinar obtained exclusively by the Prospect, Ronda Kent, chief disbursing officer at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, told bankers that “there’s […]