White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Monday defended budget director Mick Mulvaney’s right to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau amid controversy over who is actually in charge of the agency.
“Director Mulvaney has taken charge of that agency, and he has the full cooperation of the staff and appeared there this morning and things went very well,” Sanders told reporters at the White House.
Trump appointed his budget director to lead CFPB in an acting capacity just hours after its outgoing director, Richard Cordray, named his deputy, Leandra English, as the agency’s acting director.
Cordray’s supporters have cited language in the Dodd-Frank Act that gives the CFPB director the power to name his or her successor, while Trump and his supporters have pointed to language in the Federal Vacancies Act that gives the president the right to fill empty positions throughout the government.
“I think that the legal outline shows very clearly who is in charge of that agency, and both he and the White House, as well as the general counsel for CFPB who was appointed by Cordray, said that he has the legal standing to be there,” Sanders said on Monday.
Sanders said Mulvaney would lead the agency in a fresh direction as its acting director.
“We think that a lot of the past practices under the previous director and under the previous administration were used more to advance political ambitions,” she said.
Sanders noted the law is “extremely clear” in granting Trump the authority to name CFPB’s temporary head.
