Trump Admin’s Move To Cut CFPB Follows Massive Data Leak Scandal

Via American Greatness,

Progressives are trumpeting a report that consumers’ financial data may be less secure following Trump administration efforts to shrink the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

But in their eagerness to attack Trump, attention is refocusing on a massive scandal that plagued the “consumer watchdog” agency under Joe Biden– one that left over 250,000 people’s data exposed.

Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters—a top MAGA foe— blasted Trump’s efforts to downsize the CFPB, claiming staffing and contractor cuts put Americans’ data at risk.

In a statement, Waters said, “Over the past year, we have witnessed an unprecedented assault on the CFPB by the Trump Administration, which has systematically weakened the agency’s abilities to protect American consumers.”

Waters added that Trump administration efforts to shrink the federal workforce and expenditure of taxpayer money on high-priced government contractors “paved the way for the alarming findings in the report.”

But critics say that in blasting current Bureau chief, MAGA favorite Russ Vought, progressives like Waters are forgetting about the biggest threat to consumer data security in recent years: A massive data leak that occurred under the previous Biden administration, under the leadership of leftist favorite, former CFPB head Rohit Chopra. And by attacking Trump now, they are merely serving to highlight the leak and the huge risks of the agency having such expansive power and authority.

Around Valentine’s Day 2023, a CFPB staffer leaked the financial information of over 250,000 Americans.

While the staffer was fired, it remains unclear to this day what other action was taken to rectify the leak by Biden administration officials, including Chopra.

No prosecution of the staffer in question appears to have occurred.

Chopra, who ran the agency when the leak occurred, was not sanctioned.

Financial institutions overseen by the CFPB indicated at the time that they were asked to notify their customers whose data had been leaked of the event, instead of CFPB doing so.

Some institutions privately criticized the plan as likely to result in their being erroneously blamed for the leak, when in fact it was a CFPB problem.

One financial services industry advocate told American Greatness that over two years later, it is still unclear whether all affected consumers ever were notified that their data had been leaked.

“Reporters covering this were told they had been, but CFPB was very cagey about providing the text of letters or emails that would have been used to notify customers. No one really knows for sure, to this day,” one consultant working on CFPB regulatory issues said.

At the time, now-retired House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry said that the “breach raises concerns with how the CFPB safeguards consumers’ personally identifiable information.”

McHenry pledged that Republicans would ensure that any bad actors were held accountable.

However, lobbyists working on financial regulation say that some Republicans on McHenry’s former committee still feel full answers were never provided by Chopra or the CFPB.

Progressive gloating over the current allegations of inadequate data security at CFPB may prompt Vought and relevant oversight committees to look again at the circumstances surrounding the leak, which remains one of the bigger, but less publicized scandals, of the Biden era.