Trump names former CFPB official Brian Johnson to be agency's next permanent director

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NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday named Brian Johnson as his choice to be the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, turning to a trusted former aide and financial services executive who helped run the CFPB during his first term to now run the bureau for the rest of his second term in office.

Johnson was the deputy director of the bureau under Trump's first CFPB director, Kathy Kraninger, and was known for being a powerful aide to Kraninger during her tenure who had significant leeway in deciding what the bureau should or should not work on. Since leaving the CFPB in 2020, Johnson worked at Patomak Global Partners and was most recently a senior executive at the credit card giant Capital One.

If confirmed by the Senate, Johnson will inherit a bureau that's largely been inoperable since Trump came back into office and put his budget director, Russell Vought, in charge on an acting basis. Much of the bureau's recent activity has directed at unwinding its previous work.

Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, designed to operate as an independent financial regulator with broad enforcement authority over consumer financial products and services. Republicans have long seen the CFPB as an agency with too much centralized power and unaccountable to Congress, and they have repeatedly attempted to diminish it since its creation.

Johnson has long been a vocal critic of the bureau's work, particularly under President Joe Biden's choice to run the bureau, Rohit Chopra. However, Johnson’s previous public statements about the bureau differ significantly from Vought, who has publicly said he would like the CFPB shut down or eliminated. Vought's tenure as acting director will run out in August.

While Johnson testified in 2023 to the House Financial Services Committee that the bureau is “ripe for reform” either by Congress or internally, he believed that "properly structured and managed, (the CFPB) is capable of great good.”

Lindsey Johnson, the president and CEO of the banking industry lobby group Consumer Bankers Association, described Johnson as having a “tenured background steeped in consumer protection policy." Lindsey Johnson is unrelated to Brian Johnson.

Johnson's nomination will go to the Senate Banking Committee, where Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the bureau's biggest advocate, is now the top-ranking Democrat on the committee. Warren was a critic of Johnson when he was deputy director of the bureau during Trump's first term, and was also critical of Johnson's nomination.

“Russ Vought can no longer serve as Donald Trump's hatchet man at the CFPB. So here comes the next hatchet man to try to finish the job,” Warren said in a statement.