Face Petersen, the head of interim application of the Office of Financial Protection of the Consumer, resigned on Tuesday after sending a burning email to her department denouncing the efforts of the Trump administration to gut the surveillance agency.
“I have served under each interim director and director in the history of the office and I had never seen the ability to carry out our main mission, so under attack,” wrote Mrs. Petersen, who had worked at the agency since its creation in 2011.
The Consumer Office, the only federal regulator and executor of the consumer financial protection laws, has been fighting for its survival since President Trump installed Russell T. Vought, the director of the White House Budget Office, as an interim leader of the agency in early February. The Congress created the office, and only Congress can close it, but Vought has stopped almost all his work and has tried to fire 90 percent of his staff. Judicial orders have temporarily arrested layoffs, but much of the agency’s staff is on administrative license.
Mrs. Petersen became the head of the agency’s interim application after the previous application leader Eric Halperin, resigned in February with her own scathing email. Since then, Mr. Voucht has abandoned and dismissed most of the office’s execution cases, including the main demands against large banks for fraud in their payment and deceptive tactics applications that deprived customers of higher interest rates in their savings accounts.
It also ended several liquidation agreements, allowing companies to maintain the money they had agreed to pay in fines and customer reimbursements. Last month, the agency terminated an order that required Toyota to reimburse $ 48 million to customers that the automation manufacturer had prevented canceling unwanted insurance products.
“It is clear that the current office leadership does not intend to enforce the law in a significant way,” Petersen wrote in his farewell email. “While I wish you all the best, I am worried about US consumers.”
