Stuart Levenbach has been nominated for the job seemingly no one wants: director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
President Donald Trump tapped Levenbach on Tuesday for the CFPB director position for a term of five years, congressional records show.
It is unlikely he will end up serving in the role, though. A spokesperson for the CFPB told Scotsman Guide that Levenbach’s nod is a “technical nomination” designed to restart the clock on Acting Director Russell Vought’s ability to continue serving as bureau chief.
“Director Vought is going nowhere,” the spokesperson said.
The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 stipulates that a person may serve in an acting capacity in a Senate-confirmed position at an executive agency “for no longer than 210 days beginning on the date the vacancy occurs,” or, “once a first or second nomination for the office is submitted to the Senate, from the date of such nomination for the period that the nomination is pending in the Senate.”
Vought took over as acting CFPB director on Feb. 7. It was a role Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held for less than a week after Trump fired Rohit Chopra, a nominee of President Joe Biden who had served in the position since 2021.
Trump nominated Jonathan McKernan for the CFPB director job on Feb. 11, but that nomination was withdrawn on May 12 after Trump tapped McKernan to serve as undersecretary for domestic finance at the Treasury Department. Had Trump not restarted the clock with Levenbach’s nomination, Vought’s 210 days would have been up in early December.
The technical maneuver comes amid Trump administration efforts to shut down the CFPB entirely.
In October, Vought said during an appearance on “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast that he believes the administration will succeed in closing the CFPB “probably within the next two or three months.”
Vought added that the bureau is already operating with a skeleton crew following mass layoffs, stating, “We don’t have anyone working there except our Republican appointees and a few [career employees] that are doing statutory responsibilities while we close down the agency.”
The CFPB spokesperson declined to comment Thursday on Vought’s stated intention to shutter the bureau.
Last week, in a legal filing in an ongoing court case pitting a union representing CFPB employees against Vought, Justice Department attorneys argued that the funding mechanism for the bureau is unlawful because the Federal Reserve System has not generated any profits since 2022.
The CFPB, a financial watchdog agency, was established by Congress following the 2008 financial crisis. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the principal architects behind the bureau’s creation, lambasted Levenbach’s nomination in a statement released Wednesday.
“Donald Trump’s sending the Senate a new nominee to lead the CFPB looks like nothing more than a front for Russ Vought to stay on as Acting Director indefinitely as he tries to illegally close down the agency,” Warren stated. “Instead of doing everything in their power to lower costs for Americans, Trump and Vought want to make it easier for giant corporations to scam families out of their money.”
Levenbach, who has a Ph.D. in marine ecology, is currently an associate director at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), handling matters related to natural resources, energy, science and water. The OMB is led by Vought on a permanent basis.
Levenbach also serves as vice chair of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC). That panel, which oversees urban planning in Washington, D.C., was thrust into the national spotlight in July when Trump and White House allies, including Vought, accused Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of mismanaging a $2.5 billion headquarters renovation project.
Amid speculation that Trump would potentially use the Fed’s construction cost overruns as justification to oust Powell from his powerful central banking position, the president removed three Biden appointees from the NCPC. Their replacements were White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf, Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, and Levenbach.
