Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, known to be short-listed as President Trump’s choice for the Federal Reserve Board, expressed caution about his chances of making it through the vetting that precedes a formal nomination.
“They have to collect an inordinate amount of information on you, your background, your family, your friends, your animals, your pets, for the last 50 years,” Cain said, adding that he expects a “more cumbersome” probe because he has held a large number of roles throughout his career, including as a restaurant executive and lobbyist.
Cain made the comments in a video, posted Friday evening, on his Facebook page.
Cain, in the video, referred to the sexual-harassment accusations that caused him to drop his presidential campaign in late 2011, saying he will “be able to explain it this time, where they wouldn’t let me explain it the last time. They were too busy believing the accusers.”
President Trump, who has been repeatedly critical of recent Fed interest-rate hikes, has decided to nominate Cain to a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, a development first reported by Axios, on Thursday. The report, which quoted two senior administration officials, said Trump will wait until the background check is completed before making the formal announcement.
Trump then said of Cain,“I have recommended him highly for the Fed. I’ve told my folks, ‘That’s the man.’”
Trump has said he will also appoint Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser, to the Fed, but the White House has yet to send the nomination to the Senate. Moore and Cain would fill the two remaining vacancies on the Fed’s seven-member board, and their ascension, if realized, was already stirring up comments on Wall Street SPX, +0.46% that the Fed could become more partisan in its policy-setting than any time in recent memory.
Read: The democratization case for Stephen Moore at the Fed
Cain was critical of the Fed during and after his campaign for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. He said the central bank’s rate policy “manipulates the dollar” DXY, +0.07% in a column in the Wall Street Journal around that time.
