The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not exactly covered itself in glory during its brief existence. This is no surprise.

The agency is not merely a solution in search of a problem. It is an exercise in political vindictiveness. It is a creation of the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party. In fact Sen. Warren was once considered the person most likely to lead it.

The agency is an opportune creation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Its purpose is to harangue the financial sector – just punishment in the eyes of liberals for the industry’s role in the 2007 financial crisis.

Were it effective, one might have expected the CFPB to be on top of the likes of the Wells Fargo consumer banking scandal exposed in 2013. But it wasn’t the CFPB that brought that one to light. It was the Los Angeles Times.

The CFPB has instead functioned as a bumbling bureaucracy with consumers coming out on the short end. We commented about one episode in 2015. A CFPB analysis divined that Hispanics, African-Americans and Asian-Americans were being charged between two-tenths and three-tenths of a percent more on auto loans than whites, meaning they paid up to $300 more for the credit by the end of the loan period.

The CFPB socked it to auto lenders for this transgression, extracting more than $200 million in settlements. Lenders naturally responded by adjusting interest rates – upward. Dealer mark-up rates were lowered but wholesale rates were raised to more than offset that. The result was that even people with a relatively good credit score of 760 paid $586 more over the life of a $25,000 loan. That’s what the CFPB calls “protecting” consumers.

But the worst aspect of the law creating the CFPB is its attempt to make the agency unaccountable to the executive branch. This aspect has been on display during the past few days.

Richard Cordray, President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the CFPB, departed last week. President Donald Trump named Mick Mulvaney as Cordray’s temporary replacement. Mulvaney is director of the Office of Management and Budget and a critic of the CFPB.

But Cordray, in a deliberate affront to Trump, named his own temporary replacement – career bureaucrat Leandra English. Mulvaney claims the Dodd-Frank law permits him to do so.

Over the weekend English filed a lawsuit trying to block Mulvaney from taking over. Mulvaney nonetheless showed up on Monday with donuts for the staff and was ushered to his command post. This was done on the advice of the CFPB’s general counsel, who concluded Trump’s appointment, not Cordray’s, is legally controlling. It is also noteworthy that English sued in her personal capacity. Neither the CFPB nor the Justice Department is supporting her claim.

This entire display is a petulant stunt by Cordray, likely at the behest of Warren. A federal bureaucracy that doesn’t have to answer to the president may be a Democrat’s dream, but to most of America it is a scary thought, one that doesn’t square with the Constitution.

Such lawlessness is to us proof enough that CFPB should be done away. It is an expensive, destructive bureaucracy created to serve politics, not the public. Republicans should pull the plug while they still have the numbers to do so.