The top remaining enforcement official at the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has tendered her resignation, saying the White House’s overhaul of the agency has made her position untenable.
Acting Enforcement Director Cara Petersen, who has served at the agency since its creation nearly 15 years ago, said that current leadership under US President Donald Trump “has no intention to enforce the law in any meaningful way”, according to an email first obtained by the Reuters news agency.
“I have served under every director and acting director in the bureau’s history and never before have I seen the ability to perform our core mission so under attack,” Petersen wrote in an email.
“It has been devastating to see the bureau’s enforcement function being dismantled through thoughtless reductions in staff, inexplicable dismissals of cases, and terminations of negotiated settlements that let wrongdoers off the hook.”
Petersen’s departure comes four months after the agency’s enforcement and supervision chiefs also resigned amid efforts by President Donald Trump to dismantle the CFPB.
An agency spokesperson and Petersen did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In addition to seeking to cut the CFPB’s workforce by about 90 percent, acting Director Russell Vought and chief legal officer Mark Paoletta have said they will slash agency enforcement and supervision and have dropped major CFPB enforcement cases en masse, including against Capital One and Walmart. The agency has even revised some cases already settled under the prior administration.
The dramatic changes come as Republicans have complained for years that the CFPB, created in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, is too powerful and lacks oversight. Democrats and agency backers contend it plays a critical role in policing financial markets on behalf of consumers.
“While I wish you all the best, I worry for American consumers,” said Petersen in her email. A federal appeals court in Washington has yet to decide on the Trump administration’s effort to undo a court injunction blocking the agency from firing most agency staff.
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