The Trump administration has installed Jeffrey Clark at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, bringing to the watchdog agency a former Trump lawyer who was indicted as part of the president's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Clark was one of the few lawyers in the Department of Justice willing to act on President Trump's baseless claims of election fraud and was a
Clark was a former acting assistant attorney general in the environmental division of the Justice Department when he was tapped by President Trump to be acting head of the civil division. He was indicted and named as a co-conspirator in the prosecution related to President Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Though his name was later
Clark and at least five other new hires showed up in the CFPB's email directory this weekend, according to several people familiar with the situation. They are now listed as part of the CFPB's front office working under acting CFPB Director Russell Vought, who is head of the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought, Paoletta and Clark worked together in the first Trump administration and, afterward, at the Center for Renewing America, an ultra-conservative think tank that advocates for a dramatic expansion of executive authority. They are among the figures restructuring the federal government by firing thousands of civil service employees to pay for a renewal of Trump's signature 2017 tax cuts.
The Center for Renewing America recently published a primer on how to shut down the CFPB. It states that the bureau "has long operated in an opaque and duplicative fashion that has left it unaccountable to congressional oversight."
"The agency should be abolished," the primer's conclusion states. "Until Congress passes legislation that ends its existence, the acting director should make every effort to limit CFPB's onerous impact by restricting the agency down to its bare minimum functions and personnel power."
Installing Trump administration picks comes after a tumultuous week at the CFPB.
On Friday, CFPB employees were placed on administrative leave indefinitely, according to an internal email obtained by American Banker — the same day a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from firing any more CFPB employees. The CFPB's 1,755 employees were told to stop working and the agency's Washington headquarters was closed. Roughly 170 temporary and probationary employees have been fired.
The new Trump loyalists listed as working for at the CFPB under Vought include James Bishop, currently a
Rachel Cauley, a current OMB communications director and former director of communications at Vought's Center for Renewing America, is listed as a communications advisor at the CFPB, as is Alexandra McCandless, a communications director in the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition, Anthony Licata,
In the short-term, the courts have stop the purge of CFPB employees.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered the Trump administration to halt any notice of reductions-in-force and to refrain from destroying or removing any CFPB data.
Many financial firms are questioning what comes next at the bureau, including how the CFPB will respond to ongoing litigation. Among the actions taken by Vought: terminating 150 CFPB contracts, including those of expert witnesses who are scheduled to testify in cases moving toward trial, according to lawyers familiar with the matter. The firings and contract terminations suggests the CFPB is likely to withdraw or drop many — if not all — of its legal cases that are still in pending litigation, lawyers said.
"The onslaught of the actions taken by the Administration has caught banks and non-banks by surprise — and the question being asked at this moment is simply: What happens now?" said Joe Lynyak, a partner at
The CFPB did not respond to requests for comment. The agency's organizational chart has been taken down from its website, which says it
