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Brent J. McIntosh
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ProfilePerson

Brent J. McIntosh

Official · Treasury

Type
Person
Role
Official · Treasury
Updated
  • Pandemic-program role: Treasury's General Counsel until 2019 and then its nominee and Under Secretary for International Affairs: a senior Treasury principal on the international side rather than on the desks that built the domestic relief programs.
  • Institution · office: Treasury · Office of International Affairs (Under Secretary); earlier Office of the General Counsel · Type: political (PAS)
  • Tenure (relief-relevant): General Counsel at Treasury as of July 2019; nominated that month to be Under Secretary for International Affairs, and in that post by March 12, 2020, when Treasury reported his G7 call on COVID-19.2

The job (role mechanics)

  • Level / appointment: Presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed. The Senate Finance Committee took up his nomination to be Under Secretary for International Affairs at a hearing on July 24, 2019, where he appeared alongside Brian Callanan, nominated to succeed him as Treasury General Counsel.1
  • Reports to: Deputy Secretary and Secretary of the Treasury (Steven T. Mnuchin during the relief period).
  • Core responsibility: Treasury's international economic and financial policy: bilateral and multilateral engagement, the international financial institutions, and international-monetary matters.

Who they are

Brent James McIntosh is an attorney and former senior Treasury official. At the July 2019 Senate Finance hearing on his nomination he was Treasury's General Counsel; the nomination was to be Under Secretary for International Affairs.1

Education and clerkships

  • Undergraduate: University of Michigan. J.D.: Yale Law School.1
  • Clerkships: Judge Dennis Jacobs, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Judge Laurence Silberman, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.1

Career before

The hearing record lists his prior service as Deputy Assistant Attorney General; Associate Counsel to the President; Deputy Staff Secretary; Deputy Assistant to the President; and private practice at Sullivan & Cromwell.1

Role in the pandemic relief programs

  • The PPP and §4003 work ran through other Treasury offices: the Secretary, the Deputy Secretary, the General Counsel (Callanan from 2019), the Office of Financial Institutions, and Financial Markets.
  • He was still General Counsel in July 2019, when Callanan was nominated to that post; Callanan was the General Counsel over the CARES Act legal architecture in 2020.1
  • No PPP, EIDL or §4003 Federal Register rule or Treasury release bearing McIntosh's name was located in the sources we have.

Documents written or signed

  • None individually attributable to McIntosh in the domestic-relief record we have.

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

Sources (first-party)

  1. Senate Committee on Finance, "Nominations of Brent James McIntosh, Brian Callanan, Brian McGuire, and Travis Greaves," July 24, 2019 (CHRG-116shrg44390). Archive: CHRG-116shrg44390 · Hearing transcript: "Nominations of Brent James McIntosh … Brian Callanan, to be General Counsel, Department of the T... (original: govinfo.gov · stored capture) ↩
  2. U.S. Treasury, "Readout from a Treasury Spokesperson on Under Secretary McIntosh's call with G7 Counterparts," March 12, 2020. ↩
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