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The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is a small government watchdog that supervises auditing firms, hardly the typical home for the type of personality who would escalate a fight with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But PCAOB Board Member Christina Ho is on the offensive against the progressive icon. After Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat,
co-authored a letter with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) raising alarms about deficiency rates at auditing firms — and singled out Ho for a recent speech in which she compared most violations to jaywalking tickets — Ho responded publicly and in personal terms. In a provocative LinkedIn essay titled “
Senators, why are you persecuting me?” the former Treasury official claimed that Warren and Whitehouse’s letter represented an attempt to “stifle” her voice at the agency. What’s more, Ho wrote that the letter’s inclusion of a sentence that described Warren’s successful efforts to oust the previous PCAOB board represented a “thinly veiled threat” to her livelihood.
“Is there anything more abusive than U.S. Senators’ thinly veiled threat to take away the jobs of public servants just because they have different perspectives?” she wrote. “Is there anything more hypocritical than Senators who claim to serve underprivileged and underrepresented populations, but do not think twice about threatening a woman of color for simply doing what she believes is right?”
Suffice it to say, this is not how regulators typically respond to letters from Warren, one of the most forceful voices in Democratic policy circles. Warren has used her perch on the Senate Banking Committee to battle with power brokers like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. She once called on President Barack Obama
to fire former Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White. Her (many) letters criticizing the performance of industry regulators are not trifles. That doesn’t seem to bother Ho, who told MM that senators “have every right” to conduct oversight and call people out “when they see something inappropriate.”
But Warren and Whitehouse’s letter alleged that Ho made false claims about how the results of PCAOB’s audit inspections are presented, and “what I took issue with was this approach that made an accusation of me with no real evidence [or] even an opportunity to engage and ask questions and defend myself,” Ho said. Senators “should be even more careful when they're in a position of power, to not to come across like they're just intimidating people,” she added.
A spokesperson for Warren said her letter with Whitehouse was “just the latest in her years-long efforts to hold PCAOB accountable when it fails to uphold its mission of protecting investors and the public.” The letter was addressed to PCAOB Chair Erica Williams, who was recently sworn into a second term and also references her recent commentary on inspection results.
Whitehouse’s office did not respond to a request for comment. This will not be the last you’ll hear of Ho, who has occasionally courted controversy since she was appointed to the PCAOB by SEC Chair Gary Gensler in 2021. The accounting watchdog’s board is typically consensus-driven but Ho — a self-proclaimed "data nerd”
— has repeatedly cast dissenting votes on new rules and proposals. The Wall Street Journal floated her as a possible PCAOB chair if Donald Trump wins a second term. Ho acknowledged that it’s hard for people “in this town” to not assume there’s a political motive for the statements she’s made but insisted that she’s “not here to try to wield power or get attention.”
“I am not a political person,” Ho said. “But I do hope that you know what I'm doing can give other people hope that there are public servants who are willing to take a stand when necessary.” IT’S TUESDAY — Politics, gotta love it. Got tips? Let me know at ssutton@politico.com.
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