On Sunday, following the recent shake-up at White House, Corey Lewandowski warned incoming chief of staff John Kelly to dismiss Obama era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) chief. The CFPB has long been the pet project of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is primarily responsible for it’s creation, and who is it’s most fanatical defender.
“I think the general should re-look at firing Richard Cordray, the CFPB, he is a person who is now all but running for governor in the state of Ohio and he’s sitting in federal office right now,” Trump’s former campaign manager said in a discussion with NBC’s “Meet the Press with Chuck Todd.”
“I think this general as chief of staff, is going to come in and put a fresh set of eyes on the inner-workings of the White House and making sure the president’s agenda moves,” said Lewandowski, who now works as an outside adviser for President Donald Trump.
“It’s my recommendation to the president of the United States to fire Richard Cordray, and if he wants to run for the governor of Ohio, go do it, but my concern is, you’ve got an unelected bureaucrat sitting in an office right now, and I hope that the new chief of staff looks at him moving forward and saying it’s time to act decisively,” he further said.
Lewandowski noted that the CPFB, under this Obama era bureaucrat, has approved numerous measures that are detrimental to the nation and to the economy.
“No, no. I have no clients whatsoever. But what I do know, two weeks ago, Richard Cordray through the CFPB passed a rule with the antithesis of, you know, it’s going to be about a trillion dollars’ worth of arbitration that the government’s going to have to go through now,” he said, referring to a controversial new measure that would have protected consumers’ rights to file class-action lawsuits against banks.
Many Republicans including Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) also want Cordray replaced.
“The one disappointment with Trump is that he still has Richard Cordray at the CFPB. That Cordray is still there is incredibly disappointing,” Duffy said while talking to the Washington Examiner.
Even though the CPFB was set up as an independent government agency, barring the president from removing its chief, this special exemption, is now under review by U.S. Court of Appeals. The structure of the CFPB is widely seen by conservative legal commentators as unconstitutional, as it is entirely unaccountable to the congress – and therefore to the people of the United States.
Cordray has been under the spotlight for a while now; being criticized by both Republicans and Democrats for how the agency is operating.
Cordray has been in charge of the CPFB since 2012, after the agency was established in 2010 as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act.
According to Politico, citing Cordray’s aides, he intends to run for the position of Governor of Ohio.
