PUBLISHED: 13:30 EST, 17 November 2021 | UPDATED: 13:32 EST, 17 November 2021
REVEALED: Biden's Soviet-born comptroller of currency pick was arrested for stealing in 1995: White House stands by nominee Saule Omarova ahead of first hearing Thursday where she'll be grilled on her 'radical' views

* Saule Omarova, now 55, was born in Kazakhstan in the former Soviet Union

* The Cornell professor was picked up by cops in Wisconsin for 'theft' in 1995

* The charges were later dropped under Wisconsin's first offender program

* White House defended her despite the charges in a statement to DailyMail.com

* She'll likely face fierce GOP opposition at her Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday, where she'll be questioned on self-described 'radical' views

* Ranking member Toomey has asked her to send over her thesis: 'Karl Marx's Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital'

* Senior Senate Republican aides have said she still hasn't complied or responded

Omarova is expected to face a barrage of questions over her self-described 'radical' views during her Senate Banking Committee hearing tomorrow

President Joe Biden's nominee to oversee the United States' largest federal and private banks was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for stealing in 1995, it was revealed on Wednesday.

Since the White House announced it was tapping Cornell University professor Saule Omarova, 55, to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, revelations about the Soviet-born academic's radical views have formed an uphill battle to her first hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.

According to the latest report, Omarova was arrested in Madison, Wisconsin on a 'retail theft' charge.

The incident occurred on June 2, 1995, a Wisconsin Department of Justice criminal background check obtained by Fox shows.

She had a 'deferred prosecution' for the charge early the following year, according to the report, which also states that the charge was dropped under Wisconsin's first offender program.

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When asked about the newly-surfaced charge on Wednesday, the White House defended Omarova as an 'eminently qualified' candidate and described the case as a 'misunderstanding and confusing situation.'

'Saule Omarova is eminently qualified and was nominated for this role given her strong track record on regulation and strong academic credentials. The White House strongly supports this historic nomination,' a White House official told DailyMail.com.

'To be clear, Saule has been fully transparent about this incident her entire career, including to the Senate, in applications, and when she worked at the Treasury Department during the Bush Administration.

'This case was ultimately dismissed in January 1996 – more than 25 years ago – and was the result of a misunderstanding and confusing situation.'

Ranking member Toomey asked Omarova to turn over her college thesis last month but she reportedly never responded

Senator Hagerty called Omarova a Marxist in a recent statement

Republicans on the Banking Committee have been expressing opposition to Omarova's nomination since Biden first announced it in September and news of her past communist ties came to light (pictured: committee ranking member Senator Pat Toomey and fellow member Senator Bill Hagerty

The official turned the administration's ire toward Fox News for its initial report and a mysterious 'far-right partisan group.'

'It’s sad that a far-right partisan group with a pattern of engaging in tawdry behavior would partner with Fox News to smear the name of a qualified nominee seeking to serve her country,' the official said.

Omarova's previous statements on banking and Marxism have landed her in hot water with some of the same senators expected to grill her tomorrow.

She's advocated for moving Americans' financial accounts from private banks to the Federal Reserve and for forcing banks to lose leverage on federal subsidies by becoming 'non-depository lenders.'

It would diminish the stature of the institutions she's supposed to regulate.

'By separating their lending function from their monetary function, the proposed reform will effectively “end banking,” as we know it,' Omarova wrote in a paper updated in February of this year titled 'The People's Ledger.'

She summed it up more concisely in a 2019 documentary film titled 'A**holes: A Theory.' Omarova called Wall Street's hedge fund-dominated culture a 'quintessential a**hole industry.'

Saule Omarova (circled) is photographed during her studies at Moscow State University, in Russia in 1988 when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union . She studied under a scholarship named after Vladimir Lenin and wrote a thesis on Karl Marx, which Republicans are now trying to get a copy of

Omarova also proposed banning financial services companies from marketing products without government approval and wanted the Fed to regulate food prices and worker wages, among other things.

In 2017 she advocated for 'a fundamental structural reconfiguration of bank governance by giving the federal government a seat on the board of each systemically important banking organization.'

Her self-described 'radical' views are sure to come up at her hearing, along with her past comments favorably comparing the Soviet Union's treatment of women to the US.

'Until I came to the US, I couldn't imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today's world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn't always "know best",' she wrote on Twitter in 2019.

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She later walked back the comments somewhat, but reserved spare criticism for the US: 'I never claimed women and men were treated absolutely equally in every facet of Soviet life. But people's salaries were set (by the state) in a gender-blind manner. And all women got very generous maternity benefits. Both things are still a pipe dream in our society!'

Less than a day before her hearing Omarova has also thus far neglected to provide the Banking Committee with her college thesis, titled 'Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,' according to senior Senate GOP aides.

She had the paper on her resume as recently as April 2017.

GOP Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, ranking member on the panel, sent Omarova a request to produce the paper on October 5. Republican aides have said she hasn't responded.

Another Republican on the committee, Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, called her a 'Marxist' and a 'socialist' in a statement to Fox.

'President Biden's choice for banking regulator is a Marxist academic who wants to destroy the American banking and energy sectors and implement socialism in the United States, proving once again that this White House is beholden to the radical left elements of the Democrat party,' Hagerty said.

The backyard of karaoke bar at the address where Saule Omarova lived as a child, 190 Prospekt Lenina, Uralsk ( now Oral), Kazakhstan, in the former USSR

A copy of the register from Omarova's school says she was a member of the Komsomol, or 'Young Communists' in the USSR

But committee chair Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, is standing by Biden's pick.

Brown accused the media of staging a 'relentless smear campaign' against her.

'The incident took place several decades ago, and the case against Ms. Omarova was dismissed,' he told Fox of the theft charge.

Even if she squeaks past the committee hearing, a wider Senate confirmation seems unlikely - with all 50 GOP senators likely to vote against Omarova, she would need the support of every Senate Democrat.

And that support has also come into question - moderate Democrat Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona expressed 'concern' about Omarova's nomination to the White House, Axios reported last week.

Born in Kazakhstan, Omarova was an ardent Young Communist who was 'born in a yurt' - a traditional tent in the Kazakhstan steppe - who fled the Soviet Union for America and allegedly left behind an unpaid debt to a friend at Moscow State University.

An exclusive new picture shows tango-dancing Omarova, 54, as a student at the prestigious Russian educational institution alongside a crowd of classmates and teachers in the Gorbachev era of 1988 after her childhood where she grew up as head of her local Komsomol.

Omarova participates in a tango dance session. Friends say she is 'excellent'

If approved by Congress, the tango-dancing professor will be, at Biden's behest, the first woman and non-white to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which is within the Treasury Department

If approved by Congress, the tango-dancing professor will be, at Biden's behest, the first woman and non-white to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which is within the Treasury Department

Olga Cassidy claims Omarova stiffed her for $50 so she she could get a dorm room for herself at Moscow State University

Saule Omarova's mother, Saida Alibayeva, raised her. Her father was said to have little involvement

Olga Cassidy claims Omarova still owes her $50 after she gave up her dorm at Moscow State University. Omarova's mother is pictured on the right

Among her friends in the glasnost USSR was Olga Cassidy who claims this woman - who the president wants in charge of the dollar and then studying 'Scientific Communism', and writing a thesis on' - still owes her an unpaid debt for a dorm scam.

The amount - around $50 - may not seem excessive by today's standards, but in 1987, things were different.

Some 34 years on, it still grates with her former friend, as we found in an in-depth investigation into the past of Professor Sauna Omarova in the former Soviet Union.

Cassidy - now in New Zealand - lived with her parents in a secret scientific town near Moscow, and did not need to take up her place in the student dorm accommodation.

Though a devout communist at the time, Saule worked out that if Cassidy claimed her place in the two-room dorm, but did not use it, then Saule would have a prestigious room all to herself.

More than a generation on, Cassidy spoke to DailyMail.com with undisguised fury about their student conflict.

'With bitter tears and pleas, Saule exhorted me to get us a place in a two-bed student dorm, which I absolutely did not need, but was entitled to,' she explained.

'I could not resist Saule, who vowed to pay me for the 'dead soul' in the dorm so she could live in peace without unnecessary neighbors'.

So Cassidy paid from her pittance of a scholarship for Saule's room, she said, while her erstwhile friend 'lived in conditions of increased comfort'.

The cost amounted to around $50 for the academic year at the then-official exchange rate to the basketcase Soviet rouble.

But the notional value hid the true cost to Cassidy of an arrangement which she said cost her perhaps 15 per cent of her meagre student stipend.

She confronted Omarova about the money, expecting to be reimbursed, she told us.

'I finally managed to ask Saule, who had been avoiding me, about the monetary debt accumulated over the whole school year,' said Cassidy with ill-concealed angst over an event long ago.

'She suffered an amnesia attack and fled.'

With a large dollop of sarcasm, Cassidy said: 'So I have no doubt that Saule will succeed in her new position in America.

'For me back then, a young girl from a family of intellectuals, it was a downright shock how she behaved.

'And since then I had no further communication with Saule.'

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