President Trump has nominated Stuart Levenbach to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to a congressional filing. However, a bureau spokesperson told Politico that the nomination was a “technical” maneuver to allow Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to continue leading the agency as acting director without a Senate confirmation.
Levenbach comes from the energy sector and is currently associate director of natural resources, energy, science and water at OMB, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was chief of staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during Trump’s first term and also served as a senior advisor on the White House Council of Environmental Quality and National Economic Council.
Trump originally nominated former FDIC Board Member Jonathan McKernan as CFPB director, but he dropped out of the nomination process to become undersecretary of domestic finance at the Treasury Department. The CFPB has been without a full-time director since the departure of Rohit Chopra earlier this year, with Vought instead serving as acting director.
Vought has sought to terminate most of CFPB’s staff, which prompted a lawsuit from the union representing bureau employees. The Department of Justice recently filed a memo in the lawsuit stating that the bureau will exhaust its available funding early next year. The DOJ also argued the bureau cannot withdraw funds from the Federal Reserve without a congressional appropriation – a position that the bureau’s defenders dispute.
