Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Deputy Director Leandra English announced Friday that she will drop her legal bid to be named the agency’s acting director.
In a statement provided by her lawyer, English thanked the CFPB’s career employees and said she would leave the agency, where she has not maintained a presence, in recognition of President Trump’s decision to nominate a permanent director.
Deepak Gupta, her attorney, said that he would move to end English’s appeal to be named the agency’s acting director.
English had claimed that she was the rightful head of the consumer watchdog agency as part of a plot initiated by Richard Cordray, the Obama-appointed director who left in November, to keep a Trump appointee from taking over the agency.
Prompted by outside progressive activists, Cordray named English the deputy director just days before leaving office so that she, rather than a Trump selection, would be named acting director when he left.
Trump, however, named Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney the acting director under a federal law regulating vacancies, creating a situation in which both Mulvaney and English claimed to be the incoming acting director.
On the first day of work after Cordray left, CFPB workers and observers did not know who would show up for work at the bureau’s offices across from the White House until Mulvaney walked across 17th Street, box of donuts in hand, and laid claim to the office.
A federal court sided with Mulvaney after English sought to be recognized as the acting director. She had appealed that decision.
Some congressional Democrats have avoided ever acknowledging Mulvaney as the acting director, even as the conservative former congressman has aggressively revamped its operations and curbed its influence over markets.
Trump has now named budget aide Kathy Kraninger to be director on a permanent basis.
Outside progressive groups thanked English for her attempt to block Mulvaney.
“By taking on the acting director role, Leandra English courageously stood up for the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at a particularly difficult and challenging time,” said Linda Jun, a senior policy counsel at the outside group Americans for Financial Reform. “Now that the president has engaged in the process of nominating a director for Senate consideration, something he should have done long ago, the time is right to thank Ms. English for her service to consumers and to the law.”
Mulvaney has said that he has not seen English while working at the bureau. She has remained listed on the bureau’s website, though, as deputy director.
