By Nandita Bose, Doina Chiacu and Douglas Gillison
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -White House budget director Russell Vought said on Wednesday he wants to close the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even though President Donald Trump’s administration has argued in court that there is no such plan.
Vought made the remarks on “The Charlie Kirk Show” as the administration is locked in litigation with a CFPB labor union and consumer advocates over whether Trump has the authority to fire most CFPB staff or dismantle an agency created by Congress.
Representatives for the CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Very few people currently work at the CFPB’s Washington headquarters “while we close down the agency,” Vought said. “So we want to put it out and we will be successful probably within the next two or three months.”
Vought repeated Republican allegations that the agency had persecuted small businesses but failed to protect consumers.
“All they want to do is weaponize the tools of financial laws against basically small mom-and-pop lenders and other small financial institutions,” he said.
Congress created the CFPB following the 2008 financial crisis to fight predatory lending and other bad practices in consumer finance. Republicans have long accused it of exceeding its legal authority while defenders say it has returned billions to harmed consumers while preventing and punishing scams.
The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to fire most CFPB staff while arguing in court that officials did not plan to close the agency down entirely. The agency has also scrapped scores of enforcement actions and court cases while suspending oversight of major sectors of consumer financial services.
After taking control of CFPB in February, Trump said it should be eliminated outright. Lawyers for CFPB staff have said the Trump administration is illegally attempting to dismantle the CFPB and in a scathing legal opinion in March, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson cast doubt on the administration’s credibility.
In recent months, however, there had been some official activity, with a continued lawsuit against the credit bureau Experian, internal plans for the resumption of supervision and a launch of the process to rework regulations governing the use of personal data in financial technology.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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