Lewandowski Avoids Questions On Payday Lender Client

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, appeared at City Club of Cleveland Thursday. He spent his 30-minute remarks praising President Trump and the president’s campaign and attacking the media. The question and answer session at the end included challenging questions from the audience.

Since leaving the Trump campaign last year, Lewandowski has remained an outside adviser to the Trump administration and founded a consulting business. So when he publicly called on Trump to fire Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Ohio attorney general, red flags went up about why he was going after Cordray and on whose behalf.

“Yes or no, is Community Choice Financial indeed one of your company’s clients?” asked one audience member at the City Club.

“Let me be as clear as I can be, as clear as I can be -  whether Richard Cordray is chair of the CFPB or not chair of the CFPB, I don’t make one dime on that decision, not one dime," said Lewandowski.

Community Choice Financial is an Ohio-based payday lender, an industry facing new regulations from the CFPB. And, according to the New York Times, a client of Lewandowski’s. Another questioner asked the same question, again Lewandowski refused to answer it directly.