HUD hires former official at center of racial scandal

By Katy O'Donnell
Blankenstein has been hired as a senior counsel working on Ginnie Mae matters.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has hired Eric Blankenstein, the former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official whose racially charged blog posts sparked an uproar last year.

Blankenstein has been hired by HUD’s Office of General Counsel as a senior counsel working on Ginnie Mae matters, making $166,500 a year, according to people familiar with the matter.

Democrats and civil rights activists demanded that the CFPB fire Blankenstein after the Washington Post reported in September that he had questioned the veracity of hate crimes and whether the N-word is racist, in blog posts he wrote 14 years earlier.

The then-acting CFPB director, Mick Mulvaney, referred the matter to the agency’s inspector general. Mulvaney had appointed Blankenstein to be the policy associate director for the Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending, a post he left last month.

Blankenstein will report to HUD’s principal deputy general counsel starting Monday, the people said.

HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.