New Hampshire Republican Who Founded Woman-Hating Site Makes Outrageous Statements Validating Rape

The state's Republican governor calls for his resignation.

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By Kali Holloway

Robert Fisher is the founder of the Red Pill, an online subreddit for men who are sick of women complaining about rape, harassment and sexism. As a vocal participant in the group, he’s written at length about how feminism makes life hard for nice guys like him who see women as sex objects and make rape jokes.

Fisher is also a Republican lawmaker representing Belknap County District 9 in the New Hampshire state legislature. For years, no one knew the two were one and the same, until an investigation by the Daily Beast’s Bonnie Bacarisse uncovered the truth. Now the state is considering whether or not to oust Fisher, and he has promised to fight removal every step of the way.

Founded by Fisher nearly five years ago, the Red Pill has since grown to become a safe space for men’s rights activists (MRA), special snowflakes who think women are basically the worst. Under the username Pk_atheist (a reference to his being a lapsed Christian “preacher’s kid”), Fisher has cultivated a community of more than 200,000 MRAs, making the Red Pill one of the most popular sites in the manosphere. To be “red pilled”—a term that’s also wildly popular with the angry white guys in white supremacist alt-right circles—is to be awakened to the reality that women are greedy, manipulative sluts; feminism is the enemy; and rape gets a bad rap. Fisher, who was reelected in November, has consistently helped push these fringe ideas as a frequent contributor to the site.

In one exchange cited by Bacarisse, members debated whether or not it would be creepy for a 40-year-old man to demand to see the “boobs” of a 15-year-old girl. “In my opinion, no,” Fisher wrote. “It’s evolutionarily advantageous and perfectly natural. Obviously I would never advocate breaking the law, but just because there’s a law doesn’t mean 15-year-old girls were always considered out of bounds.”

Fisher also claims to be quite the ladies’ man, once writing he had a “soft harem,” meaning he was juggling multiple women who were unaware they were one of many. “[Women have] absolutely done this to themselves,” Fisher wrote in another post. “I feel zero regret or shame pumping and dumping.”

Fisher was most prolific on the topic of “rape hysteria,” promoting the idea that women frequently make up rape accusations, because who doesn’t want to have one's sexual history and character assailed for the sake of attention?

“I’m going to say it—rape isn’t an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot,” Fisher declared in one post. “I think he’d say it’s quite good, really.”

Fisher urged Red Pill members to document all sexual encounters with women to safeguard against being falsely accused of rape. He suggested they include the warning, “By entering, you consent to being video and audio taped.” Fisher claimed to have put the policy into practice in his own home.

“[S]tatistically I’m overdue for a false rape allegation,” Fisher once wrote. “You can’t have sex with this many women without getting one.”

Oddly, Fisher had a hard time getting anywhere with women. He decided this was for reasons that had nothing to do with him, obviously. Bacarisse notes that the lawmaker, “complained that girls were ghosting on him and standing him up,” among other things:

He aired grievances about the character of women: They were uninteresting, immature, unintelligent, lacked depth, and were entitled. He bemoaned that dating was easier for women. He felt it was unjust that women get a free ride, believing “a pair of boobs grants [them] equal footing with somebody bringing intelligence or a personality.” Over time, Fisher’s writing became increasingly hostile. He decided that existing seduction and pickup forums were overly “feminized,” complaining about “white knights” and their misdirected admonitions about “creepy” behavior (which he believed works as a dating strategy).

Though Fisher initially feigned ignorance about the site or its origins after Bacarisse’s investigation, he later admitted to his role in the site. Last Tuesday, the House Legislative Administration Committee held a hearing to determine the course of action following revelations about Fisher’s e-trail of misogyny.

Debra Altschiller, a New Hampshire Democratic Representative who has written about rape culture and works with a survivor advocacy group, spoke at the meeting.

"I am here today to not only assert that Rep. Fisher not only contributes to that rape culture that we experience here in the House, but he is a purveyor of rape culture in our state and in our nation," Altschiller said, according to NPR. "It is our responsibility to work with vigilance in this body to eradicate this vile scourge from our ranks and from our state."

New Hampshire’s Republican governor Chris Sununu has previously called for Fisher’s resignation. “Representative Fisher's comments are horrendous and repulsive and his resignation is certainly in order," Sununu declared in a statement.

Fisher has responded by painting himself a victim of a leftist campaign that has taken his words out of context. (As if there’s a context that could cast any of his words in a better light.)

"A lot of convenient reporting, to play into partisan politics, and I'm disappointed that's where it's gone," he said in his defense at the hearing, which he left before it concluded. "But I'm more than happy to get back to work and concentrate on what matters, not wasting everyone's time on this."

A Daily Beast followup found that as of a couple weeks ago, Fisher has continued to post on and moderate the site. The report points to “an alias that appears to belong to him—under the username redpillschool—[that] regularly champions misogynistic views.”

"I'm disappointed that this sort of attack has replaced real news, but it strengthens my position and resolve that fighting for equal rights is more important today than ever," Fisher said in a statement that takes a page right out of Meninist-in-Chief Donald Trump’s playbook. "Here's my message to the public: I am not disappearing. I will continue to stand strong for men's rights and the rights of all."

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

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By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.

“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”

In testimony to the Senate last week, the acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, said, “There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.”

Mr. McCabe was referring to the broad investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The investigation into Mr. Flynn is separate.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Mr. Comey created similar memos — including some that are classified — about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said. It is unclear whether Mr. Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.

Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey last week. Trump administration officials have provided multiple, conflicting accounts of the reasoning behind Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Mr. Trump said in a television interview that one of the reasons was because he believed “this Russia thing” was a “made-up story.”

The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Mr. Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Despite the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, the investigation of Mr. Flynn has proceeded. In Virginia, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas in recent weeks for records related to Mr. Flynn. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial ties to Russia and Turkey.

Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.

Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

Mr. Trump then turned the discussion to Mr. Flynn.

After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Mr. Comey shared it with senior F.B.I. officials. Mr. Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret — even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation — so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.

Mr. Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Mr. Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Comey’s recollection has been bolstered in the past by F.B.I. notes. In 2007, he told Congress about a now-famous showdown with senior White House officials over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The White House disputed Mr. Comey’s account, but the F.B.I. director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, kept notes that backed up Mr. Comey’s story.

The White House has repeatedly crossed lines that other administrations have been reluctant to cross when discussing politically charged criminal investigations. Mr. Trump has disparaged the continuing F.B.I. investigation as a hoax and called for an investigation into his political rivals. His representatives have taken the unusual step of declaring no need for a special prosecutor to investigate the president’s associates.

The Oval Office meeting occurred a little more than two weeks after Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Comey to the White House for a lengthy, one-on-one dinner in the residence. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty — which Mr. Comey declined, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

In a Twitter post on Friday, Mr. Trump said that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

After the meeting, Mr. Comey’s associates did not believe there was any way to corroborate Mr. Trump’s statements. But Mr. Trump’s suggestion last week that he was keeping tapes has made them wonder whether there are tapes that back up Mr. Comey’s account.

The Jan. 27 dinner came a day after White House officials learned that Mr. Flynn had been interviewed by F.B.I. agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. On Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates told the White House counsel about the interview, and said Mr. Flynn could be subject to blackmail by the Russians because they knew he had lied about the content of the calls.

IF DONALD TRUMP WERE A C.E.O., HE’D PROBABLY BE FIRED TODAY

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By John Cassidy

Donald Trump has built his political career on his reputation as a successful businessman, so it seems fair to assess his recent performance as President as if he were a C.E.O. running U.S.A., Inc. The report card isn’t pretty. Indeed, if Trump were the chief executive of a public company, the firm’s non-executive directors probably would have been huddled in a crisis meeting on Tuesday morning, deciding whether to issue him a pink slip.

In such a corporate scenario, the board members would likely decide they had no choice but to oust Trump to protect the reputation of the company and prevent further damage. During the past week, he has twice messed up monumentally, doing grave harm to his own credibility and undermining the country’s reputation around the world. And these were just his latest mistakes. During his four months in the corner office, Trump has repeatedly shown that he is patently unsuited for the position he holds, and he has also demonstrated a chronic inability to change the way he operates.

It was bad enough when, this time last week, he fired one of the company’s most senior compliance employees, James Comey, and then went on television and contradicted the official version of the dismissal, which his deputy, Mike Pence, and others had stated publicly. Not for the first time since Trump took over, the firm’s public-relations department was left scrambling, and Pence was sorely embarrassed. Trump’s subsequent outbursts on Twitter, in which he appeared to threaten Comey, only made a bad situation worse. The entire episode confirmed the impression that Trump puts his own interests, and his personal grievances, ahead of his duties to the company.

But that wasn’t the nadir. On Monday we learned, courtesy of a blockbuster story in the Washington Post, of another big blunder on Trump’s part. The day after he canned Comey, Trump revealed some of the company’s trade secrets to senior executives from a key rival, Russia Corporation, which only last year did all it could to sabotage one of U.S.A., Inc.,’s key product launches. Just how much damage Trump’s indiscretions have inflicted on the company isn’t yet known. But it’s clear that he was guilty of a serious breach of trust, and another stunning error of judgment.

Since he was chosen as C.E.O., last November, it has been one thing after another. But, partly because stock in the company has risen despite it all, most of U.S.A., Inc.,’s senior executives and big shareholders have until now stayed loyal to Trump. On Monday, however, there were signs of dissension in the ranks, with some people in the company registering alarm at what is going on at the top.

“Obviously, they are in a downward spiral right now, and have got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening,” Bob Corker, who helps lead U.S.A., Inc.,’s Tennessee division, said after the Washington Post story appeared. “The chaos that is being created by the lack of discipline is creating . . . a worrisome environment.” Susan Collins, a widely respected company veteran from the firm’s Maine office, told reporters, “Can we have a crisis-free day? That is all I am asking.”

Perhaps the most worrying sign for Trump came from U.S.A., Inc.,’s corporate headquarters, in Washington, D.C., where Paul Ryan, the company’s head of product development, who is widely regarded as a key Trump ally, expressed concern about the latest turn of events. While not referring to Trump directly, Ryan said in a statement that “protecting our company’s secrets is paramount.”

To be sure, I am stretching the corporate analogy here—Ryan said “our country’s secrets,” not “our company’s secrets”—but it brings out an important point. Most major corporations wouldn’t put up with Trump-like behavior. They have well-established rules and procedures for dealing with a C.E.O. who has gone rogue. If a firm’s board of directors sees the boss acting erratically and seriously undermining the firm’s long-term interests, it can step in and find a replacement.  (At the very least, it can issue a reprimand and launch an internal inquiry to find out what has gone wrong.)

Politics doesn’t work like that, of course. More than sixty million Americans voted for Trump, and removing him from office would be a monumental undertaking. In light of Trump’s disclosures of classified information to Russia, some legal experts argued on Monday night that Congress could impeach him for violating his oath of office, in which he pledged to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States”—but that seems a long way off. Despite the latest statements from Ryan, Corker, and others, the G.O.P.’s leaders have come nowhere close to publicly supporting such a move.

On Tuesday morning, Trump took to Twitter and sought to defend himself. He didn’t deny that he had given classified information to the Russians. Instead, he pointed out that, as President, he has the right to declassify secrets, which is true. He also said he did it for “Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against isis & terrorism.”

This wasn’t how the Washington Post framed the story: the newspaper reported that Trump, in his meeting last Wednesday with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, appeared to “be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat.” Quoting an unnamed U.S. official who had knowledge of the exchange, the story quoted Trump as saying, “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day.” That is our President, and our C.E.O.

The costs of Trump's sabotage of Obamacare already are showing up in rate hikes

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By Michael Hiltzik

The easiest prediction to make about the healthcare business was that the efforts by Congress and the Trump administration to sabotage the Affordable Care Act would produce a flood of rate hikes by insurers for 2018.

We are now standing on the edge of the water. Early rate requests have come in from insurers in five states, according to ace ACA-tracker Charles Gaba, who calculates the weighted average rate request increase in those states at about 30% (that is, weighted for the enrollment of each insurer).

Many are blaming the doubt and confusion sown by Congress and the White House for one-third or more of their requested increases over 2017 rates.

“Uncertainty is already clearly leading to significantly higher rate hike requests than would otherwise be asked for,” Gaba observes.

It’s proper to note that some insurers, as well as Standard & Poor’s and the Congressional Budget Office, were seeing signs of stabilization in the individual market for 2018. Those projections are now getting reversed.

The Trump effect includes continued uncertainty about whether the feds will make cost sharing reduction payments. These are subsidies payable directly to insurers that cover deductibles and co-pays for approximately 6 million families with incomes below 250% of the poverty line.

House Republicans have sued to stop the payments on grounds that the Affordable Care Act provided for the subsidies but didn’t appropriate funds for them. Trump hasn’t said whether he will continue the Obama administration’s policy of paying them until and unless a court decisively rules against them. Instead, he’s even threatened to withhold them as a bargaining chip to force Democrats to negotiate an Obamacare repeal.

Another aspect of Trump policy that unnerves insurers is the indication that the administration will stop enforcing the individual mandate, which requires every American to have coverage — a linchpin of the ACA system because it balances the ACA’s mandate that insurers cover people with preexisting medical conditions without a surcharge.

Trump’s efforts to undermine the ACA date back to inauguration day, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities documents in its “Sabotage Watch.” On that day, Trump issued an executive order encouraging the Department of Health and Human Services to take an indulgent view of enforcing the individual mandate. A week later, the administration canceled an ad campaign and other outreach aimed at prompting holdouts to sign up for coverage before the deadline. Enrollments fell off a cliff.

Some insurers are being painfully direct about the Trump effect. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, which is moving into several counties abandoned by Humana, told the state’s insurance regulator in a May 9 letter that it would be raising rates in part because of the chaos in Washington:

“Given the potential negative effects of federal legislative and/or regulatory changes,” the letter says, “we believe it will be necessary to price-in those downside risks….These risks include but are not limited to the elimination of Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies (CSRs), the removal of the individual mandate and the collection of the health insurer tax.”

The tax referred to in the letter is a health insurer fee imposed by the ACA but suspended through this year. Next year it’s expected to bring in more than $14 billion, Insurers have been lobbying for years to get it revoked, and the Obamacare repeal bill passed by House Republicans last month does so, but doesn’t provide any funding to cover the gap.

Insurers in other states have pointed to the CSR uncertainty and other vacuums in Trump policy as grounds for portions of their rate hikes or reasons to pull out of the ACA individual exchanges altogether. Medica, the only insurer signed up to provide individual policies in Iowa next year, says it’s still pondering whether to do so barring “swift action by the state or Congress to provide stability to Iowa’s individual insurance market,” a Medica executive, Geoff Bartsh, told the Des Moines Register.

“Bartsh said Congress isn’t helping the situation by continuously arguing over how to change rules in midstream while insurers are trying to figure out their rates for 2018,” the paper reported. “When asked what advice he would have for current Medica customers in Iowa, Bartsh replied: ‘Call your elected officials.’”

In Pennsylvania, five insurers joined with the state insurance commissioner to warn Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on April 26 that the market in that state is tottering because of federal inaction. “The most immediate drivers of instability are the weakening of the individual mandate, the uncertain status of funding for the cost sharing reductions and the absence of funding for overall market stabilization measures.”

Market stabilization measures mean the risk corridor provision of the ACA that was designed to subsidize insurers that acquired a customer base with an above-average level of risk; the program was undermined by congressional Republicans, who effectively cut its funding.

“The absence of certainty regarding market parameters and in particular those with direct financial consequence,” the insurers and commissioner continued, “magnify the risks of market participation in a way that issuers and regulators cannot ignore.”

Joe Swedish, the CEO of Anthem, a big insurer on the exchanges, has threatened to raise rates or pull out of some states if the CSR doubts aren’t resolved soon. “We plan to file preliminary 2018 rates with the assumption that the cost-sharing reductions will be funded," he said during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call. But “if we do not have certainty that CSRs will be funded for 2018 by early June, we will need to evaluate appropriate adjustments to our filing. … Those adjustments could include resubmitting higher rates increases or exiting certain individual ACA-compliant markets altogether.”

Despite these warnings, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans continue to pretend that the ills of the individual market are President Obama’s fault. Earlier Tuesday, Price remarked that “the failure of the individual marketplace under Obamacare is driving insurers out of counties and states at an alarming rate, leaving millions of Americans without choices for affordable health insurance.”

He showed no willingness to acknowledge that his own policies are responsible for a good part of those problems, and the failure of the White House and congressional GOP to take the matter in hand allows them to fester.

The Republican game plan long has been based on blaming any collapse of the individual market on the law itself and its implementation under the Obama administration. But there are clear signs that that won’t work. The tide of anger visible in town hall meetings held by Republicans who voted to repeal Obamacare in the House is evidence that they’re being held responsible. So, too, is the result of a Quinnipiac University opinion poll released in March, showing intense disapproval of the GOP repeal plan across all age groupings and all political categories except Republicans.

With control of both houses of Congress and the White House, the GOP is “it” on healthcare policy now. If the individual market collapses, they’ll get the blame.

Trump’s New Bank Regulator: Lawyer Who Helped Banks Charge More Fees

Keith Noreika helped big banks avoid state laws protecting consumers. As head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, he now has the power to override those state laws.

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By Cezary Podkul

In the early 2000s, banks successfully sued to stop Iowa from limiting their ability to charge ATM fees to non-customers. They also fought off states’ attempts to stop them from charging non-customers to cash checks drawn on the banks’ accounts. In another case, they stopped California from forcing two banks to conduct audits of their own residential mortgages.

What do all these cases have in common? The winning argument in each was that states had no right to impose their laws on federally regulated national banks. And the man who helped make that powerful argument was Keith Noreika — President Trump’s pick to head the federal agency that oversees national banks.

Noreika, a prominent Washington attorney who specializes in financial regulatory law, has made a career out of representing banks as they sought to fight back consumer-friendly state regulations and class-action lawsuits accusing banks of deceptive practices.

He is now the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a position he can serve for 130 days without Senate approval and during which he does not have to abide by stricter ethics rules governing permanent appointees.

As head of the OCC, Noreika will be well-positioned to lighten regulations on banks — without the need for Congress to pass legislation.

Among the targets may be the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street overhaul, which made it easier for states to hold national banks accountable. Noreika has criticized the law’s burdens, while Trump has called it “horrendous.”

Under Dodd-Frank, the head of the OCC has broad power to review and preempt states’ consumer finance laws.

“The first way to change the regulations is to put in regulators who will propose to stop enforcing them,” said Andy Green, a former Democratic Senate staffer who helped craft the 2010 law and now works at the liberal Center for American Progress.

Noreika’s ascension fits into a broader pattern of Trump administration appointees. Many of them have worked to influence the same agencies they’ve now been assigned to lead. And while Trump has been slow to name people to positions that require Senate confirmation, he has been quick to install officials out of public view.

Through an OCC spokesman, Noreika declined to be interviewed. But he said in a statement:

“I am proud to have had an effective law practice where I represented clients of all types — banks, institutions, individuals, and a large labor union.”

He added:

“I do think that ten years after the crisis and seven years after the passing of Dodd-Frank, now is a good time to take stock of the rules implemented and actions taken to ensure the nation has the right sense of balance and coherence in regulating financial institutions.”

(Read his full statement here.)

Noreika’s appointment has raised the ire of Democratic lawmakers.

“You have chosen to replace the current head with an acting head who is unvetted, has obvious conflicts of interest, and lacks the experience to run an agency that employs almost 4,000 individuals,” seven Democratic Senators wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday.

Noreika is following in the footsteps of his mentor, John Dugan, who worked with Noreika at the corporate law firm Covington & Burling — before himself leaving to head the OCC from 2005 to 2010.

Under Dugan, the OCC was criticized as being too friendly to banks in the face of widespread lending abuses that fueled the financial crisis. While Noreika now heads up the OCC, Dugan is back at Covington, where his bio says he “advises clients on a range of legal matters affected by significantly increased regulatory requirements resulting from the financial crisis.”

Some say it’s too early to draw any conclusions on how Dugan’s protégé will run the agency.

“I don’t think you should assume that what a lawyer argues for a client is indicative of how he or she would react when you’re administering the law,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, senior chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, a prominent corporate law firm.

Consumer advocates are particularly concerned about Noreika’s frequent reliance on the argument that federal banking laws and OCC regulations trump state laws — a concept known as preemption.

In 2005, when Noreika became a partner at Covington, the firm noted that “many of Mr. Noreika’s cases have challenged the validity of state and local laws as preempted by the federal banking laws” and listed Wells Fargo and Bank of America as prominent clients.

ProPublica identified more than a dozen such cases filed in federal court from 2000 through 2005. Most were dismissed or settled in banks’ favor.

“That’s a real problem,” said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center in Washington, D.C. “States often have laws that protect consumers in areas where there are no national laws.”

Banking lawyers say it only makes sense to give precedence to federal banking laws. Otherwise, national banks would end up dealing with 50 different regulators rather than one — the OCC. That was the whole point behind Congress’ creation of the agency during the Civil War, when states’ conflicting regulations made banking and commerce more difficult.

But in the years before the financial crisis, as abuses in the mortgage-lending markets began to surface, the OCC was slow to act. States did act. Between 1999 and 2007, North Carolina and about 30 other states passed laws targeting predatory lending practices.

The OCC, meanwhile, adopted sweeping regulations that prevented those laws from applying to national banks and extended that protection to the banks’ state-chartered subsidiaries. In 2008, then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer accused the agency of embarking “on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents.”  

At the time, Dugan brushed off the criticism. “Almost everyone who has paid attention to the subprime lending crisis has concluded that OCC-regulated national banks were not the problem,” he said in a statement responding to Spitzer.

But two separate inquiries — the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commissionand a report by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee — disagreed. The commission concluded that the OCC’s preemption of state laws ended up “preventing adequate protection for borrowers and weakening constraints” on risky mortgages.

The banks used the OCC to engage in “regulatory arbitrage,” said Arthur Wilmarth, a professor at the George Washington University Law School.

Dugan did not return phone calls but said in an email, “I disagree categorically with Wilmarth.” He referred his testimony to the crisis investigators, in which he said the financial crisis was “not caused by federal preemption of state mortgage lending laws.” Instead, Dugan said, “the root cause of the mortgage crisis was exceptionally weak underwriting standards.”

In 2007, as Dugan presided over the OCC, Noreika and his Covington colleagues won the biggest preemption victory of all, Watters vs. Wachovia Bank. The case evolved from separate federal lawsuits involving banks that had sought to shield their subsidiaries from state laws and subsequently faced collapse or fell into legal trouble for their business practices — Wachovia, National City Bank of Cleveland and Wells Fargo. Wilmarth advised state banking regulators on the cases.

The cases were merged and went all the way up to the Supreme Court, where Noreika argued that state laws didn’t apply to subsidiaries of national banks like Wachovia. In a 5-3 vote, the high court agreed.

Preemption became an even bigger issue after the 2008 collapse of several big banks, including Wachovia. Local governments tried to sue banks for alleged misdeeds, but again were blocked by preemption.

By then, Congress was working on Dodd-Frank, and preemption was a hotly debated area of reform. One of the changes Congress enacted as part of the law was to negate the effect of the Supreme Court decision that Noreika had litigated. Dodd-Frank also gave local law enforcement authorities more power to bring lawsuits against national banks under state laws. And it created a revised set of rules under which the OCC can review state banking laws to determine if they should be preempted.

The responsibility for those reviews falls to the head of the OCC — now Noreika. He has the power to determine if a state consumer finance law is preempted by federal law.

“He will now have his hand on the preemption button,” said Wilmarth, the George Washington University law professor.