Consumer Bureau Official Who Sued Trump to Step Down and Drop Her Suit

An Obama-era official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who argued that she — and not President Donald Trump’s budget director — should have been handed temporary control of the agency announced Friday that she was stepping down.

Last year the official, Leandra English, sued Trump and Mick Mulvaney, the bureau’s interim director, over what she said amounted to a coup. On Friday she said she would drop her lawsuit and leave the bureau early next week now that Trump has formally nominated Kathy Kraninger to be the agency’s permanent director.

“I want to thank all of the CFPB’s dedicated career civil servants for your important work on behalf of consumers,” English said in a statement her lawyer posted on Twitter on Friday.

Congress created the agency in 2010 to shield consumers from predatory lending and other abusive banking practices. Trump has railed against it, arguing it is unnecessary and meddlesome.

After its first director, Richard Cordray, stepped down last year, Trump named Mulvaney its interim director.

English, the deputy director, sued, arguing that when Cordray resigned, she became the rightful head of the agency.

But Mulvaney immediately set to work defanging the bureau, even as English remained an employee. He ordered staff members to begin calling it the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to reduce the power of its brand. He requested an allowance of $0 from the Federal Reserve for the agency at the beginning of 2018. And he called for the staff to display “humility” in their efforts to protect consumers.