Attorney General Keith Ellison testified at a Senate hearing Thursday in the defense of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
St. Paul, Minnesota — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office joined another legal challenge to the Trump administration on Thursday.
Ellison’s office filed an Amicus brief in support of a case led by the city of Baltimore as the Trump administration effectively frozen CFPB’s work.
At a Senate Committee hearing Thursday, Ellison testified, “Without CFPB, no one cares about the store.”
“After all the amazing work it was done to try to balance all the economic tragedy that required this institution with the measures of economic justice, Ellison said. Shutter the CFPB.”
After the 2008 financial crisis, Congress established the CFPB through the Dodd Frank Act to provide federal oversight for large banks, credit unions and other financial institutions. The CFPB tallies an estimated 25,000 complaints per week from the public, claiming it has provided consumer relief to more than $2 billion over the past 15 years through enforcement measures and consumer complaints intakes. did. Last summer, former CFPB director Rohit Chopra was involved in an event with federal and state officials focusing on addressing predatory lending practices aimed at the Somali community in Minnesota. I visited the university.
And just days before Trump took office, the Minnesota lawyers’ office had partnered with CFPB in a lawsuit against a debt relief company. However, Ellison said the future of that ongoing lawsuit is now unknown.
“We got caught up in the incident with the idea that the federal government will become one of the joint plaints through the CFPB, and now they simply aren’t,” Ellison said. “So we put the rights of all those people we are trying to protect in lawsuits where we are at risk.”
The Trump administration cited the CFPB as another example of government waste, and quickly moved to launch Chopra this month, stopping work at the bureau. That included locking the doors at its headquarters in Washington, DC.
“We effectively shut down the out-of-control CFPB, escort radical plasterers from the building and lock the door behind it,” Trump said. “What they were doing was so bad, and it was so bad that they were spending money.”
President Trump and several Congressional allies have suggested that states should be able to take on a larger share of enforcement in the field of consumer protection.
However, Ellison and other DFL elected officials said the Attorney General’s Office, along with the state’s Department of Commerce, did not have the resources or jurisdiction to tackle large banks like the CFPB.
At a press conference after Thursday’s hearing, DFL Sen. Matt Klein said in the session that due to CFPB uncertainty, he would be extremely protective of consumer protection funds in the state budget, according to the session, which said CFPB uncertainty He said it would be extremely protective of consumer protection funds in the state budget.
“We certainly do our best. We take it as a mission and belief to protect Minnesotan,” Klein said.
