House Republicans are floating the idea of voting to hold Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray in contempt of Congress for failing to provide records to Congress.
Republicans are investigating the process the agency used to draft rules banning mandatory arbitration clauses from financial contracts. And if your sense of humor is anything like mine, this might be the part where things get funny.
Republicans want to ensure the CFPB isn't drafting rules in secret.
The ban, hailed by consumer advocates, was finalized in July but Republicans in Congress are working to overturn it.
Republicans demanded the documents as part of a probe into rulemaking, and whether the rules regarding mandatory arbitration clauses were written in a proper fashion.
Mandatory arbitration clauses require consumers to resolve any disputes through arbitration instead of joining together in class-action lawsuits.
Virtually nothing has transpired in a "proper fashion" under Trump and this Republican Congress.
Republicans just spent the first six months of their tenure conspiring to reorganize the entire health care system in secret. Most Republicans didn't even know what their plans were until a few hours before taking their final votes. That may have ultimately cost them John McCain's vote and doomed their prospects for repealing Obamacare.
The New York Times and Pro Publica reported this afternoon that the Trump regime has formed "deregulation teams" for federal agencies that are operating in secret, with agencies refusing to even provide the names of people being appointed to each team.
For their part, the CFPB says they have turned over "thousands" of documents and will continue providing Congress with documents as they're requested.
This may sound familiar because House Republicans also pursued charges of contempt against former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for not turning over documents that he was not physically able to turn over because, to his knowledge, they were routinely erased at a government hardware recycling facility. House Republicans eventually gave up on that endeavor and held former IRS employee Lois Lerner in contempt instead, but she was never prosecuted because they had no case.