The Department of Housing and Urban Development is promoting an official who was involved in a scandal last year after old blog posts surfaced in which he suggested most hate crimes are hoaxes. Eric Blankenstein, a former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official, will become the acting executive vice president at Ginnie Mae, a government-run corporation that promotes homeownership, according to an email reviewed by Politico. Blankenstein apologized last year after his old blog posts were discovered by the Washington Post, where he questioned whether the n-word is racist and was skeptical about the legitimacy of hate crimes. Blankenstein was hired in the HUD’s Office of General Counsel after he stepped down from the CFPB due to the blog posts.
