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A successor appointed by Donald Trump will have access to some pretty damaging information, and Elizabeth Warren's toady would do almost anything to keep that from happening. But he failed.

Here's what Richard Cordray was trying to hide in his attempted coup at CFPB

By Dan Calabrese ——--November 28, 2017

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Here's what Richard Cordray was trying to hide in his attempted coup at CFPB I guess it was a mildly clever plan, even if the holes in it are kind of obvious. The law that created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - which was basically written by Elizabeth Warren to make the bureau completely unaccountable to just about anyone - says that when the director is unavailable, the deputy director becomes acting director. So director Richard Cordray decided to first appoint leftist fellow traveler Leandra English as deputy director, then make himself "unavailable" by resigning.
When Donald Trump moved to appoint an acting director pending the selection of a permanent one who would need Senate confirmation, English could claim that there already was an acting director - her - and Trump couldn't name a new one. Clever! But no one who knows anything about laws governing the executive branch was buying it, and that includes Trump, who correctly cited the Federal Vacancies Reform Act as giving him the sole authority to name an acting director in Cordray's stead, and chose OMB director Mick Mulvaney to temporarily fill the post. That brought a lawsuit from English, who claimed Trump couldn't send Mulvaney to temporarily do the job that was hers to temporarily do. The intrigue!
So on Monday morning both Mulvaney and English show up for work at the CFPB - Mulvaney with a bag of donuts, as all good bosses should - and Mulvaney informs English that she's welcome to stick around and do her job as deputy director, but that she needs to understand she reports to him. English not only failed to get a court to stay Trump's appointment of Mulvaney, but even CFPB's own in-house counsel told her she doesn't have a leg to stand on. The office of CFPB General Counsel Mary McLeod has prepared a memo concurring with the opinion of the U.S. Justice Department that Trump has the power to appoint his budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, as temporary leader of the federal watchdog agency, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
One source said the memo would be sent to CFPB staff on Monday. CFPB officials did not respond to requests by email and phone requesting comment. McLeod’s opinion places her against Richard Cordray, who resigned as CFPB director on Friday and elevated his former chief of staff, Leandra English, to replace him on an interim basis until the Senate confirms a permanent successor named by Trump. Hours later, the Republican president named Mulvaney as acting head, plunging the bureau into uncertainty.
Imagine the precedent it would set if outgoing directors of federal agencies could name their own successors as they were heading out the door, and presidents couldn't override their choices. Imagine of your company functioned like that. No one would be in charge and there would be no accountability, ever, which was actually the whole idea when Warren developed the concept for the CFPB. It's funding comes from the Federal Reserve and Congress has nothing to say about it. The president can only fire the director "for cause" - whatever that means - and there is no way to stop the CFPB from exceding its authority and harassing entire U.S. industries, which it did regularly under Cordray's leadership. Cordray's attempt to outmaneuver Trump and name his own successor was some show of chutzpah, and it's indicative of how the left sees the CFPB, which the media gullibly refers to as a "watchdog" agency. In practice the CFPB is an attack dog that goes after businesses liberals don't like, such as the payday lending industry. It has also established rules that make it near impossible to take disputes between consumers and businesses to arbitration - even of the involved parties want to do so - because Cordray's friends on the trial bar prefer class action suits that net them millions while the consumer who join the "class" usually end up with coupons for a free movie rental or two.

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Cordray feared that Mulvaney would discover evidence the CFPB has been hiding for years

The left created the CFBP and it's staffed with just about nothing but liberals. The left believes this particular federal agency is their exclusive property, and that a liberal must always be its director. That's not really how constitutional government works, of course, which is why they tried to make the CFPB impervious to the rules other agencies have to follow. Writing for National Review, Ronald Rubin thinks he knows another thing that motivated Cordray's desperate gambit, and if he's right, it's no wonder:
Cordray feared that Mulvaney would discover evidence the CFPB has been hiding for years, including the bureau’s failure to investigate the Wells Fargo fraud; data manipulation in its failed attempt to regulate car dealers by guessing buyers’ races and alleging discriminatory lending; inspector-general admonishments to stop obstructing congressional oversight; and some particularly explosive sexual-harassment claims against CFPB senior managers. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Cordray attempted to forestall these damaging revelations until the 2018 elections by appointing his chief of staff, Leandra English, CFPB deputy director. David Silberman, who led the bureau’s rulemaking division, had been acting deputy director since January 2016. In a professional government agency, he would have been the obvious internal choice. But Silberman was not a reliable co-conspirator, so Cordray kept the deputy director position and his options open for two years.

Cordray's coup has failed spectacularly

That's one of the dangers of commiting malfeasance in your job. Eventually someone will probably replace you, and will have access to all the same information you did. If you did wrong and there's any sort of paper trail to show it, you're in big trouble. If Rubin is correct then Cordray hoped to install his ally Leandra English so she could help to bury the evidence that CFPB had engaged in these dubious practices. Now that this has failed and Mulvaney is running the show, Cordray's actions are likely to be exposed. He supposedly wants to run for governor of Ohio so this will presumably not help him. Neither will his demonstration of the fact that he doesn't respect limits on his own authority. Give Richard Cordray a little power, he'll look for ways to take a lot more. It's what he does. Anyway, there are plenty of reasons the Trump Administration will win the legal battle here. The most obvious is this: The scenario in which "the director is unavailable" can't be said to apply when the director resigns for a simple reason. He is no longer the director, and therefore his unavailability is irrelevant. The only way the could have worked is if Cordray disappeared, but then I suppose Trump might have cause to fire him. The only cause Trump really needs, though, is that he wants someone new. (Not that Cordray's misdeeds in the office didn't provide plenty of real cause.) The law that made the CFBP unaccountable to the president is unconstitutional, since the only person in whom the Constitution vests executive authority is the president. Donald Trump's preference is the only cause that's needed, and even the CFPB's own lawyer has recognized that. Cordray's coup has failed spectacularly. Hopefully he won't be successful in waging a coup in Ohio, which has had bad enough leadership in recent years. A governor even worse than John Kasich is the last thing the Buckeye State needs.
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Dan Calabrese——

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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