Trump-installed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Russ Vought is abandoning all pretense that he is serving the interests of anyone other than corporate lawbreakers. One of the ways the political leadership at the CFPB has tried to save face and contest the painfully obvious truth that it wants to end the Bureau altogether is by stating that its “priorities” include protecting military and veteran families. But even this statement is nothing more than lip service after the Trump’s CFPB’s recent settlement with a fintech lender which openly disregards the federal Military Lending Act’s protections for servicemembers and sanctions the company’s violations instead of penalizing them.

The most potent way the Military Lending Act (MLA) protects military families from abusive predatory lending is by capping interest at 36 percent on loans to servicemembers and their dependent family members. The specific interest rate used there is referred to as the “Military Annual Percentage Rate,” or MAPR. The MLA and its implementing regulations are crystal clear that predatory lenders cannot evade its rate cap by unbundling the interest rate of a loan into a plethora of expensive fees that hike up the price by nefariously making the true cost of a loan hard to understand. The MLA explicitly requires lenders to ensure that fees are included and calculated into the disclosed interest rate so that servicemembers can readily understand how much the loan will cost them.

One of the very few cases that survived Russ Vought’s massacre of the CFPB’s law enforcement program involves an online lender called MoneyLion Technologies that made installment loans to servicemembers. In 2022, during President Biden’s term, the CFPB filed suit against MoneyLion and 37 of its subsidiaries operating across the country, alleging that its installment loans to military families included interest well above the MLA’s strict 36 percent MAPR cap, primarily by disguising the interest as sham “membership fees.” If a servicemember wanted to take out a loan, MoneyLion required them to join their “membership program,” which required them to pay monthly $20-30 membership fees. But if the servicemembers wanted to cancel their membership and escape the costly program, MoneyLion often refused unless their loan and any outstanding fees were already paid off. This policy resulted in borrowers being trapped in an increasingly expensive cycle of fees–all of which amounted to a much more expensive loan than advertised.

Even worse, MoneyLion’s purported “membership program” was a sham—even the Trump-led CFPB highlighted this in April 2025 when it explained that the only benefits the program provided were a discontinued Facebook group, routine credit reporting, and illusory “rewards.” The CFPB’s position throughout the litigation had been that these bogus membership fees should be included in the MAPR, proving that the interest rate exceeded the 36 percent cap. MoneyLion hotly contested this issue throughout the case, and in April, the court agreed with the CFPB that the MLA requires MoneyLion to include the membership fees in the MAPR. This was a major victory for the CFPB, and a clear statement that the MLA was intended to provide robust financial protections for servicemembers.

But now, in a rush to gratify yet another corporate lawbreaker before it shuts down the Bureau, Vought’s team has settled its enforcement action against MoneyLion, and inexplicably taken a complete 180 on the MAPR issue. Incredibly, the CFPB and MoneyLion filed a proposed stipulated judgment and order that reverses on the issue of the membership fees. It allows MoneyLion to continue to exclude the fees from the MAPR, in direct violation of the Military Lending Act itself—an astonishing attempt to bend over backwards for a predatory lender by affirmatively giving them a permission slip to violate the law. Not only does the order allow MoneyLion to violate the MLA, it also lets MoneyLion off the hook without any real penalty. The paltry $1.7 million in redress is one of the lowest redress amounts in any CFPB MLA enforcement action. Critically, the statutory remedy for a loan that runs afoul of the MLA is to void the loan completely. But for the first time in any MLA enforcement action, the CFPB is choosing to let a lender accused of violating the MLA continue to collect on noncompliant loans.

The Trump CFPB’s corporate pardon agenda has been on full display since Russ Vought took over in February, and it has been hard to see how they could possibly make things worse for Americans. In July, it pardoned Navy Federal for overcharging its customers, primarily military and veteran families, $80 million in junk overdraft fees. It has not conducted a single supervision exam, which includes monitoring and enforcing financial institutions’ compliance with the MLA. And now, it has openly worked with a fintech lender to help them get permission to violate the MLA through a court order.

Our nation’s all-volunteer fighting force deserves a federal financial watchdog that will mirror their courage and stand up to corporate scofflaws, not one that cowers at a challenge and admits defeat. Unfortunately, this settlement shows exactly what kind of lapdog the CFPB has morphed into.

IN DEBT, a Substack about families’ debts and the economy from the good folks at Protect Borrowers