Fox News host Dana Perino allowed conservative lawyer and columnist Shannen Coffin to criticize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on her show without divulging his representation of clients antagonistic to the CFPB.

On the November 27 edition of Fox News' The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino, host Dana Perino interviewed Coffin about his recent column for The Weekly Standard titled “The Definitive Explanation of Why Trump Is Right on Mulvaney, English, and the CFPB.” During Coffin’s appearance on the show, Perino quoted from this column at length, and allowed Coffin to criticize the CFPB as he argued that there are “no checks and balances” when it comes to the agency. 

But at no point during Coffin’s appearance did Perino acknowledge that Coffin has “represented clients affected by and opposed to CFPB regulation,” as noted in the Weekly Standard column that Perino quoted.

This is not the first time that Fox has allowed guests to shill for conservative causes or personalities without divulging important information about their potential conflicts of interest. From the November 27 edition of Fox News' The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino:

DANA PERINO (HOST): Amid the ongoing saga over who will take over the consumer financial protection bureau, my next guest says this legal battle will likely be a long one. Quote: “The dispute and the resulting litigation will cast further doubt over the legitimacy of an already troubled agency, a result that would run counter to Cordray’s stated purpose in launching his little bureaucratic war, but would let him continue to protect his bureaucratic legacy for just a little while longer, at a price of accountability to We the People.” Shannen Coffin is an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson. Shannen, take me back to 2010. What was the intent of the CFPB, and where did everything go wrong?

SHANNEN COFFIN: Oh boy, that’s a big question. Well, look, the desire was to consolidate some other governmental agencies’ power into one bureau that would have regulatory control over consumer financial products. And the problem is though, the power here is so concentrated in one person. Unlike other agencies that are accountable directly to the president or some agencies that are made up of commissions that are made up of multiple members, you’ve got one guy, this Richard Cordray, who just resigned on Friday, who has all of the power. And a court that has looked at that said that is too much power. They have to be -- in order to be accountable in our constitutional system, he has to answer to the president. And that’s the constitutional background about this agency.

PERINO: And doesn’t it also get its money to run, not from the Congress, but from profits from the federal reserve?

COFFIN: That’s right. So the federal reserve pays the freight on the CFPB. Congress doesn’t appropriate funds directly like it does for every other agency. So you don’t even have real accountability to Congress. So there are just no checks and balances on the system. And this latest dispute is really another sign of that.