By Gabe Kaminsky (Daily Caller)
A government watchdog is suing a federal agency responsible for regulating consumer finance over its alleged stonewalling of records on its “hostile takeover” of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), according to a complaint obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Functional Government Initiative (FGI), a group probing abuse in government, filed a Freedom of Information Act request in January for records related to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) “unprecedented moves” undermining the FDIC’s independence. The watchdog says it has received no records even though the CFPB promised it would produce them by June 2, and is now suing for the records.
Rohit Chopra, the CFPB’s director who sits on the FDIC board, came under scrutiny after trying to launch a joint public comment on bank merger reforms in December 2021 without the approval of then-FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams. Chopra bypassed “long-established processes” by serving the chair with a “finished document requesting public comment” in a “brazen attempt to seize control,” McWilliams, a Trump appointee who announced her resignation in February, wrote in a December op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.