On May 25th, President Bush said that Treasury Secretary John Snow had not given him any indication that he was leaving soon:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Secretary of Treasury Snow?

Q Has he given you any indication he intends to leave his job any time soon?…

PRESIDENT BUSH: No, he has not talked to me about resignation. I think he's doing a fine job.

In fact, not only had Snow indicated he was leaving, President Bush had already settled on his replacement. Today, Tony Snow said that Hank Paulson was offered the job on May 20 and accepted a day later:

QUESTION: Do you have any tick tock on the Paulson…

SNOW: Yes. The tick tock is the two of them met on the 20th of May and there was a conversation. And Hank Paulson accepted the job a day later. That was subject to clearance. It does take time, especially for a Senate confirmable position, to complete those. So it did take time to get some of those clearances wrapped up.

Later in the briefing, Tony Snow essentially admitted that Bush misled the public, claiming it was necessary to protect the market:

QUESTION: Can I just ask you one other follow-up on Karl about Secretary Snow? When the president was asked, when he was standing next to Prime Minister Blair and millions of people were watching, he's telling the American people that: I have got no indication the secretary's going to resign…

SNOW: No, He has not talked to me about resignation. I mean, it was very carefully worded. But again, what you didn't want to have, I think, is at a period of time when you haven't finished doing your clearances for the person you want to fill that position, you don't want to have chaos in the markets. It was…

QUESTION: But he's already offered it to somebody. He's got it in hand. I mean, he offered these positions all the time and wait for FBI and background searches that sometimes take a long time. I mean, the Supreme Court nominees take six weeks. But you still announced to the public you're pick somebody…

SNOW: Well, but you know, again Hank Paulson at that time, you don't announce somebody who hasn't been pre-cleared. You haven't finished the clearance process, you don't announce it. Period. I mean, it's just…

QUESTION: But it's not even announcing him. You could have been direct and said: We're expecting…

SNOW: Well no — with all due respect, I think there was some concern again about how something like that affects the markets. If you have uncertainty for an extended period of time, which would have been, at that point, four or five days, I think that is something that you've got to worry about and you've got to be responsible in dealing with it.

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