Milbank: Doughnuts alone do not an agency director make

Doughnuts alone do not a director make. Under the statute that created the CFPB, the watchdog agency set up after the 2008 crash to police lending abuses, it should now be rightfully run by Leandra English, the deputy director who succeeds the just-resigned director, Richard Cordray, until the Senate confirms a permanent replacement. Trump found another statute that he says lets him appoint Mulvaney. English filed suit to defend her legitimacy, Mulvaney submitted doughnuts, and a Trump-appointed judge, to nobody’s surprise, ruled in Trump’s favor. An appeal is likely.

Swindled by Trump

But, ultimately, the coup will succeed. Whether it’s Mulvaney (who has called the bureau he now proposes to lead a “joke”) or somebody else, Trump will eventually be able to install a director who can defang the watchdog — and Wall Street bankers and corporate lobbyists will plant their flag of conquest at another agency. Already, Mulvaney says he’s freezing new hiring, new rules, and payouts to consumers from a penalty fund.

Even for this phony populist president, who instead of draining the swamp stocked his White House and Treasury Department with Goldman Sachs executives and sprinkled billionaires and lobbyists across the government, the move on the CFPB is brazen. That’s because Trump’s legal justification for taking control of the CFPB was written by a lawyer who until just a few months ago was defending a foreign payday lender against the agency’s attempts to punish it for lending abuses.

As the Intercept’s David Dayen reported, Steven Engel, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the memo justifying Trump’s takeover, was a lead counsel for Canadian payday lender NDG Financial, which the CFPB cited for misleading and overcharging U.S. customers.

It’s difficult to imagine something swampier than a corporate lawyer joining the government and then orchestrating the disarming of a federal agency in litigation with his former client.

There’s nothing the forgotten man, thus swindled by Trump, can do now to keep big banks from regaining the upper hand over consumers. Outside CFPB headquarters, demonstrators were doing about the only thing that could be done: shouting.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., attempted a call-and-response with the crowd: “There is a legitimate director right now, and that person’s name is?” From the confused audience came a muffled sound akin to “Mush!”

“English,” Merkley coached. “Leandra English.”

The judge gave a different answer. And the federal government, soon to be out of the business of policing abusive lenders, will instead deliver them doughnuts.