'Charade': Federal judge spanks Trump over attempt to wind down consumer watchdog

A federal judge delivered a nasty rebuke Friday to the White House, ordering it to stop trying to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered Russell Vought, Mr. Trump’s budget chief and the man he installed as acting director at CFPB, to rehire fired employees and to quit taking other steps that could gut the agency.

She told Mr. Vought to make sure the CFPB can continue to collect and respond to complaints from consumers.

Judge Jackson, an Obama appointee to the court in Washington, said the Trump team had engaged in “a hurried effort to dismantle and disable the agency entirely.”

She said that ran afoul of orders from Congress, which set up the CFPB in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street collapse.

She said when the lawsuit challenging the closing was first filed, Mr. Vought’s team continued the shutdown anyway, reversing course only when she announced a hearing on a lawsuit challenging his action.

That was too little too late, and too suspicious, the judge said, calling it a “charade.”

“The testimony and the contemporaneous documents suggest that those last-minute communications were nothing more than window dressing, and that nothing has changed,” the judge wrote. “The defendants are still engaged in an effort to implement a presidential plan to shut the agency down entirely and to do it fast.”

She said her restraining order is intended to keep the agency from collapsing before her case can be completed.

“In sum, the Court cannot look away or the CFPB will be dissolved and dismantled completely in approximately 30 days, well before this lawsuit has come to its conclusion,” she wrote.