CFPB Beefs Up Legal, Legislative Staff Amid Mounting Challenges

The CFPB is adding three staffers to its general counsel’s office and a new top legislative affairs official, gearing up for legal threats to its existence and a hostile Congress.

Two longtime agency lawyers, Rebecca Deutsch and Steve Bressler, were named the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s deputy general counsel for law and policy, and litigation, respectively, according to an agency email that was obtained by Bloomberg Law.

Jason Powell will serve as deputy general counsel for oversight, said the email CFPB Director Rohit Chopra’s office sent to agency staff on Friday. Powell, who joins the CFPB from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an ethics watchdog group, previously worked for the House Oversight Committee.

The CFPB also added Kellie Larkin to serve as staff director for the agency’s Office of Legislative Affairs, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Larkin joins the CFPB from the staff of the House Budget Committee. She previously served as general counsel and legislative affairs chief to Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee and the Obama White House.

The additions to the CFPB’s legal and legislative affairs staff come as the agency faces a number of pressing challenges.

The US Supreme Court is set to consider whether to hear a challenge to the CFPB’s independent funding mechanism through the Federal Reserve. A ruling upholding the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s October decision—finding that the funding mechanism is unconstitutional—could put the CFPB’s existence at risk, unless Congress and the Biden administration agree to a new way to pay for the CFPB’s operations.

In addition, the CFPB, which was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, now faces a Republican-led House Financial Services Committee that has promised vigorous oversight of the agency. That has made relations with Congress and oversight preparations a priority.

The CFPB also announced internally a new chief operating officer, Adam Martinez, who joins from the Export-Import Bank. Martinez, a longtime Treasury employee, was part of the Treasury team that helped stand up the CFPB in 2010 and 2011 after it was created.

The email also announced several other new appointments in the CFPB’s communications office, the director’s office and other units.