CFTC's Pham fires person leading investigation into her

by Lydia Beyoud

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s acting chair, Caroline Pham, removed the agency’s head of human resources, who was leading an internal investigation into staff complaints against Pham for creating a hostile work environment, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. 

Pham replaced HR head Marti Tracy with the CFTC’s chief diversity officer, Tanisha Cole Edmonds, the people said. That goes against a directive last month from the Trump administration, which ordered the staff of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility offices at government agencies to be placed on administrative leave.

Other DEIA employees working for Edmonds were placed on leave, the people said. The memo also asked agencies to provide plans for firing DEIA employees. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it granted the CFTC a waiver to the directives. 

The CFTC said the allegations against Pham are “baseless” and an “attempt by disgruntled individuals that are under investigation to distract from the CFTC’s important mission.”

An agency spokesperson said Tracy was removed from her position pending an internal investigation into failures to address several HR matters.

No part of this move violated any executive order, the spokesperson said. 

Pham also removed Joel Mattingly, the agency’s chief financial officer, from his duties, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the personnel changes were not among those that Pham announced two days after taking the acting chair role.

Since Pham became a CFTC commissioner in 2022, Mattingly had repeatedly pushed back on her requests to fly business class, for luxury hotel stays and for the CFTC to cover the cost of her commute between Washington and her home in New York, said the people. She’d also tried to have her duty station changed from Washington to New York, which would have made it easier to get reimbursed for travel expenses between the two cities.

Such expenses are typically against agency spending rules, which are designed to protect both the commission’s budget and individuals, as some violations of the federal Antideficiency Act can carry criminal penalties.

Claims about Pham’s travel are “categorically false” and at all times she complied in full with all laws, regulations, and agency policies, said a CFTC spokesperson. 

Both Mattingly and Tracy declined to comment.

Pham, the CFTC’s junior Republican commissioner and a former Citigroup Inc. executive, was an unexpected pick as acting chair, with the more-senior Republican Summer Mersinger widely expected to be picked for the role. 

The investigation into Pham involved a grievance filed by the National Treasury Employees Union in late 2023 alleging that the agency allowed her to “repeatedly intimidate, harass and abuse” staff, creating a hostile work environment. It included the alleged example of a commission meeting in which she berated an enforcement official for almost 30 minutes and demanded he respond only yes or no to her questions.

Pham refused to be interviewed for the investigation and sought multiple delays, some of the people said.

Pham hasn’t been shy in critiquing the agency’s processes and procedures, particularly those that she’s said resulted in misconduct allegations against enforcement staff in their handling of at least one case. Last May, she called for the Government Accountability Office, a federal-government watchdog, to do a complete review of the agency and recommend reforms.

Many within the agency have privately voiced concerns that Pham pushed aside two senior career staffers over their past run-ins with her, the people said. While it’s common for new agency heads to reassign top roles with policy-making responsibilities, staffers overseeing such work as budgeting, accounting and human resources typically aren’t removed.

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