July 29, 2021

Toomey Seeks Answers From White House on Reports of Senior Career Staff at CFPB Being Pushed Out of Agency

Committee Forced to Escalate Matter After Uejio and Chopra Refuse to Comply

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) today sent a letter to National Economic Council (NEC) Chief of Staff Leandra English seeking answers on reports that the Biden administration is removing senior career officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in order to replace them with handpicked loyalists, raising the question of whether the agency potentially violated civil service protections.


“As a member of then-President-elect Biden’s transition team, you were charged with reviewing operations at the CFPB, and according to recent press reports, many of the Biden administration’s reversals of CFPB policies advanced during the Trump administration were carried out by Acting Director Uejio under your recommendation,” Toomey wrote. “Accordingly, in order to understand what, if any, knowledge or involvement you may have had regarding any effort to replace CFPB civil servants with individuals perceived as more loyal to the current administration, I request that you provide answers to the following questions by no later than August 5, 2021.”


On June 17, 2021, Ranking Member Toomey called on the CFPB to turn over documents in the wake of these reports. The same day, Senator Toomey sent a separate letter to Mr. Rohit Chopra, President Biden’s nominee to lead the CFPB, requesting information on whether he was aware of—or involved in—any such actions that may have occurred.


The deadline for the CFPB and Mr. Chopra to respond was Monday, June 21. To date, the Committee has not received any response from Mr. Chopra, nor has the Committee received any of the records it requested from the CFPB.


On July 13, all Republican members of the committee sent a letter criticizing Mr. Chopra for his “refusal to answer basic questions about whether [he was] privy to the troubling and possibly unlawful actions described in the press,” which the Senators called “unacceptable from a federal nominee and in [the Senators’] view should disqualify [him] from consideration as CFPB Director.”


Click here to read the full letter. 

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