Exclusive: CFPB Director invested in asset manager he singled out for criticism
CFPB Director Rohit Chopra has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in an asset manager he has singled out for criticism.
Rohit Chopra has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested with one of the largest asset managers in the world, Vanguard, a company he called a “natural oligopoly” during a widely-panned speech at Harvard Law School.
Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and a board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), was previously under fire for prejudging Vanguard, the Washington Reporter previously reported last month.
These revelations, confirmed by Chopra’s latest financial disclosure forms obtained by the Reporter, come as investors such as Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen have accused the CFPB of “debanking” political opponents. “My partner, Ben’s father, has been debanked…for having the wrong politics,” Andreessen said on Joe Rogan’s podcast. “For saying ‘unacceptable things’ under current banking regulations.”
Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) quest to root out bureaucratic waste, wants to “delete” Chopra’s CFPB altogether. A Republican operative close to President Donald Trump told the Reporter that “Donald Trump will do what he does best with Chopra, and tell him ‘you’re fired.’”
The FDIC is in process of finalizing a rule that would restrict the ability of investment firms, like Vanguard, to own stock in banks. Conservatives classified the rule to the Reporter as a form of “micromanagement.”
A former senior Trump banking official told the Reporter that this proposed policy is “an attempted jurisdictional land grab by the FDIC that would duplicate efforts the Fed already is doing.”
