Mick Mulvaney is the properly appointed interim director of the CFPB, Justice Department attorneys argued Monday.
In documents filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly to reject the argument of agency Deputy Director Leandra English that she should be running the agency.
Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, was President Trump’s choice to run the CFPB after Director Richard Cordray resigned. Cordray had tried to install English as acting director before he resigned—citing a section of Dodd-Frank that says the deputy serves when the director is absent or unavailable.
English filed suit in an effort to block Mulvaney from taking control of the CFPB.
However, the Trump Administration has argued that under the Federal Vacancies Act, the president has the power to appoint an acting agency head as long as that person already has been confirmed by the Senate for another position.
Justice Department attorneys Monday accused Cordray of bureaucratic sleight-of-hand, saying that he ran the agency for two years without appointing an executive director. Then in the waning hours of his last day in office, he appointed English, his chief of staff as deputy director.
“He made no secret of the fact that this action was an attempt to hand-select his successor,” the attorneys contend.
“Mulvaney, as the Senate-confirmed Director of OMB, is eligible to serve as Acting Director,” the Justice attorneys said. “The text of the Dodd-Frank Act does not say otherwise.”
Also on Monday, the Republican state attorneys general from 13 states filed a brief supporting the administration’s argument.
They said that the director of the CFPB has an extraordinary amount of power.
“Any federal official who wields that level of power should be appointed by the President—not by Congress, and certainly not by an unaccountable federal bureaucrat,” they said.
Attorneys generals filing the brief are from the states of Texas, West Virginia, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
Last week, a group of Democratic state attorneys general filed a brief siding with English.
