The Intercept – “As soon as Richard Cordray, the current director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, officially resigns — which could happen as soon as this week — we are told President Donald Trump will choose Mick Mulvaney, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, to run the CFPB on a temporary basis. It would be a GOP dream come true. Mulvaney, who once called CFPB a “sad, sick joke,” would then be able to carry out the long-desired conservative wish to dismantle the agency that safeguards consumers from the deceptions of banks and credit card companies. Practically every media outlet has carried this report about Mulvaney to CFPB. There’s only one problem: it’s not Trump’s pick to make. That fact, and expected resistance to that fact inside the White House, could create a titanic legal battle, and a scenario with competing interim directors of the agency, which has become a political football ever since Congress created it in 2010. “This will be like the situation where you had two popes,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Adam Levitin, Georgetown Law professor and former CFPB adviser, was the first to point this out. The statute that created the CFPB is pretty clear: In the event of the absence of a director for the agency, the deputy director serves that role. The director appoints the deputy director; it doesn’t require Senate confirmation…”