Last week, the Trump administration announced two new picks for leading divisions within the Federal Trade Commission, chosen by Chairman Andrew Ferguson.
Daniel Guarnera to lead the Bureau of Competition. The Bureau of Competition leads the FTC’s work to enforce antitrust laws, encompassing the divisions that investigate mergers and acquisitions across many different industries. It also homes the litigation group, which supports the FTC’s litigation efforts. More on Daniel Guaranera:
- Guarnera most recently led the DOJ Antitrust Division’s civil conduct taskforce. The taskforce led ATR’s major antitrust cases.
- Guarana first joined the agency in 2020, working on the ATR’s investigation into Google’s monopoly of the ad tech market.
- Before joining the DOJ, Guarnera was an associate at BigLaw firm Kellogg Hansen starting in 2015.
- Guarnera worked as “aide to Republican Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa during the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.”
- Per Bloomberg: “Noah Phillips, a former Republican FTC commissioner during the first Trump administration who worked with [Guarnera] on Capitol Hill and when he was at DOJ, called him a ‘smart, savvy, thoughtful and delightful individual.’”
Christopher Mufarrige to lead the Bureau of Consumer Protection. The Bureau of Consumer Protection leads the FTC’s work to rein in unfair, deceptive and fraudulent business practices, including through suing corporations that have broken consumer protection laws. More on Christopher Mufarrige:
- In 2024 he joined the FTC as an attorney-advisor in the office of FTC commissioner Melissa Holyoak, also serving as Holyoak’s chief of staff.
- From 2022 to 2024, he worked in various regulatory counsel positions at Marqeta, a credit card issuing and payment platform.
- From 2015 to 2018 and again from 2021 to 2022, he worked at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
- Per the Capitol Forum, “In two separate stints at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Mufarrige also worked closely with former Inspector General A. Roy Lavik. A 2023 CFTC oversight report found Lavik had wrongfully disclosed whistleblower identities, breached security protocol and misappropriated funds. Lavik retired shortly after the report was published.”
- From 2019 to 2021, he worked as an Associate at BigLaw firm Wilson Sonsini.
- From 2018 to 2019, Mufarrige worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, first as a Senior Advisor and then as an Attorney Advisor.
- In 2020, the New York Times reported that Christopher Mufarrige was implicated in “maneuvers” by Trump’s CFPB political hires to “water down their findings on payday loans and use statistical gimmicks to downplay the harm consumers would suffer if the payday restrictions were repealed” while the agency revised a payday lending rule.
- The CFPB whistleblower “complained about Mr. Mufarrige’s ‘attempts to selectively cite evidence’ and his pattern of making ‘critical errors on basic economics.’”
- Subsequently, The American Prospect reported that Christopher Mufarrige owned a “Buy Here Pay Here” auto dealership, a business known to “issue used car loans to customers with poor credit at high interest, and quickly repossess the vehicles in the event of default. The dealers often resell the same used car multiple times to different borrowers, similar to how payday lenders try to churn multiple loans out of one borrowing cycle.”
- In 2018, he worked in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Trump White House.