Despite legal dispute over his job, Mick Mulvaney waltzes in to first day as CFPB acting director with donuts

(Image credit: Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)

published 27 November 2017

Mick Mulvaney started a new job on Monday under rather unusual circumstances: A legal battle is swirling around whether his new job title — acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — actually belongs to him. But that didn't stop Mulvaney from coming to his first day of work with a peace offering: donuts.

When the CFPB's previous director, Richard Cordray, stepped down from his position Friday, he appointed the agency's chief of staff, Leandra English, as deputy director, which would have made her acting director by default. But then, President Trump announced he wanted Mulvaney, who is also the current White House budget director, to fill the role. On Sunday, English filed a lawsuit claiming Trump did not have the legal authority to appoint a new head of the CFPB. The lawsuit claims that under Dodd-Frank — the financial reform bill signed in 2010 that created the CFPB — the agency's deputy director is next in line for the job.

As head the Office of Management and Budget, Mulvaney has pushed for financial deregulation and heavy spending cuts. A Politico profile written over the summer quotes Mulvaney as saying, "I don't think anyone in this administration is more of a right-wing conservative than I am." He's also previously called the CFPB "a joke," and during his confirmation hearing said the agency was run by "essentially a one-person dictator." At least the new dictator likes donuts.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.

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