Agency Targeted by Trump Drops Enforcement Suits

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has dropped several enforcement actions against companies like Capital One and Rocket Homes, weeks into chaos caused by orders from the Trump administration. In notices of voluntary dismissals filed on Thursday, the CFPB dropped lawsuits it had brought against Capital One, Rocket Homes, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, and others. Those suits were all filed under Rohit Chopra, whom President Trump fired as director. The CPFB has since plunged into turmoil, the AP reports, with the White House ordering it to halt nearly all its work. The administration also closed the agency's headquarters and moved to fire scores of its workers.

Trump has defended his broadside against the CFPB—including recent claims about the agency being "set up to destroy people." Supporters of the agency stress that it provides crucial oversight. The agency is tasked with creating rules and taking enforcement actions to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by a wide range of businesses and institutions. Since its founding, the bureau has said that it's obtained nearly $20 billion in financial relief for US consumers in the form of canceled debts, compensation, and reduced loans. Legal actions often involves banks, mortgage servicers, credit card companies, student loan processors, payday lenders, money transfer providers, credit reporting agencies and debt collectors, per the AP.

Last month, prior to Trump taking office, the CFPB sued Capital One for allegedly misleading consumers about its offerings for high-interest savings accounts—with the bureau accusing the banking giant of "cheating" customers out of more than $2 billion in lost interest payments as a result. Its Jan. 6 suit against Vanderbilt Mortgage accused the lender of pushing consumers into loans they couldn't afford to buy manufactured homes. And the CFPB's December complaint against Rocket Homes alleged a "kickback scheme" from the company to illegally steer prospective borrowers to Rocket Mortgage, which operates under the same parent company, and away from other competitors. But all those cases will now be discontinued with Thursday's actions and cannot be refiled.

(More Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stories.)