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The Consumer Protection Branch of the Justice Department has been shut down.
The Justice Department is planning to dissolve its Consumer Protection Branch, a part of the Civil Division that prosecutes cases involving tobacco marketing, fraud against seniors and service members, and entities involved in the opioid crisis.
A source at the Justice Department told the Prospect that the branch will be disbanded by the end of the fiscal year, on September 30. Attorneys were told at a meeting this afternoon that the agency would be split, with scant other details. The decision follows on a memo by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that called for a broad reorganizing of the agency.
Consumer Protection Branch attorneys began informing counterparts in other agencies on Thursday evening, sources tell the Prospect. The attorneys will be reassigned in other parts of the Civil Division, as well as to the Criminal Division and the Federal Programs Branch, which represents the government in civil litigation. It is unclear whether the cases in the Criminal Division will be fraud-related, or whether they will focus on other administration priorities.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration is facing well over 100 lawsuits over its actions in the first hundred days, and faces a shortage of lawyers to defend it at the Federal Programs Branch. Officials had been looking for cuts to make up for the manpower shortfall. A proposal to shutter the Department’s Tax Division was shelved at the last minute; there were also a number of reassignments out of the Civil Rights Division.
That could be a reason for the shuttering of the Consumer Protection Branch. In other words, because Trump’s executive branch is being sued on a daily basis, there aren’t enough lawyers available to prosecute consumer fraud.
But the move also fits with the deprioritizing of consumer protection across the government. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has faced down an effective dissolution on multiple occasions in President Trump’s second term, only holding onto 1,500 of its 1,700 employees after preliminary injunctions in lawsuits. The CFPB has dropped 13 cases left over from the Biden administration, most recently a case against Reliant Holdings, which allegedly sold bogus credit cards with high membership fees that were only allowed to purchase items from its meager online store.
Trump has also ordered weaker enforcement of retail investor protections for cryptocurrency assets at the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission; the president and his family have stakes in digital asset companies and have issued their own meme coins.
The loss of the Consumer Protection Branch will compound these losses elsewhere in the government, and it comes at a time when economic turmoil could make frauds and scams more attractive. The lack of enforcement could present an invitation to these unsavory characters to go after vulnerable elements in society.
The Consumer Protection Branch had a broad portfolio. Its consumer health and safety component includes investigation and litigation over faulty medical devices, fake or counterfeit pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements, tainted food products, defective and dangerous consumer products, fraudulent clinical trials, illegal sales and marketing of cigarettes, and unlawful transportation practices. Perhaps the biggest set of cases from this component involve criminal and civil actions in the prescription opioid industry, intended to stem the overdose epidemic.
The consumer fraud and deception side of the branch involves cases targeting large-scale scams against older adults, AI- and cyber-enabled crimes harming consumers, privacy breaches, illegal telemarketing, service member fraud, and other deceptive acts and practices. The branch works with the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Attorney’s offices, and many other agencies across the government.
One Consumer Protection Branch member told the Prospect that the branch has been active for more than 50 years and that it would be a tragedy to disband it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi was notorious for easing up on companies harming consumers when she was the top law enforcement officer in Florida. She dropped a case against Donald Trump’s fake university after getting campaign contributions, and tossed out prosecutors who were investigating foreclosure fraud in Florida. The deputy who actually executed that firing, Richard Lawson, followed her to the Justice Department; he has been the lone attorney representing the government in the case brought by law firms Perkins Coie and WilmerHale alleging that Trump executive orders against BigLaw are illegal. He’s lost a number of these cases thus far.
Current and former Justice Department employees expressed little surprise with the action. One described the Trump administration as “DEI for robber barons.”
This story has been updated with more information about the timing of the closing of the Consumer Protection Branch.
