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Vought and Musk try to decapitate the CFPB [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-16
Russell Vought's assignment as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget was already a disaster for the United States. As one of the prime movers of Project 2025, he presents a threat, just like all of those who worked on 2025.
For him to replace Rohit Chopra as Administrator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is another blow to protection from financial fraud. The Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, was the Acting Administrator up until this point. That was bad enough. Now it's gotten worse.
Others have already done articles on him as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, I'm just going to cover the CFPB. I started this diary on Feb.8th and just kept adding to it.
Bessent had already stopped any enforcement actions, regulations from being finished or working on new ones. The agency basically was told to come to a screeching halt and not do anything.
Elizabeth Warren was rightly angry at Russell's confirmation as the Director of Office and Management Budget. She went ballistic after she heard about his appointment to the CFPB.
Bad things are already happening. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau X account went offline on Feb.7th. Elon Musk is at work here also. He has been a major critic of the Bureau. Same with Mark Zuckerberg.
Not only that but their ConsumerFinance.gov website has been made to look non-functional. But if you scroll down all the options still work. You already couldn't get to their enforcement action web page through any links on the site, it was hidden. I saved the link in a previous story. They missed this page, as they have several others that I found for agencies they wiped out.
Elon Musk is taking credit, as he posted on X on the 7th. Note the cute gravestone icon.
The CFPB's budget comes from the Federal Reserve. Musk and Zuckerberg have been trying to make a court case that the CFPB's financing is unconstitutional because Congress has no control of it. It was designed that way by Sen. Elizabeth Warren back in 2011 to keep it from politics and partisan whims. Now it looks like they don't even have to make a case. Vought is obviously going to try to dissolve the Bureau from within, because he's going to be too busy at OMB to do both.
"Also Friday (7th), Musk's DOGE staff reportedly gained access the CFPB building and gained access to the Bureau's computer systems, which the CFPB Union slammed as a 'clear attempt to attack union workers and defang the only agency that checks the greed of payment providers.'"
"Shortly after the agency announced a new rule oversight of big tech companies and others offering digital funds transfer and payment wallet apps," Musk said he wanted to delete the CFPB because there were too many duplicate agencies.
That doesn't ring true, because the CFPB does things that no other agency does.
CFPB workers.
100 workers protested outside the CFPB on Saturday (8th).
Here's the DOGE X landing page.
The people may have voted for change, but they didn't vote for Elon Musk or DOGE.
One of last things the CFPB did before Bessent stopped everything, it published it's annual list (PDF) of companies that collect and sell Consumer data. It's another one Musk and his crew missed because it's under files.consumerfinance.gov, not just consumerfinance.gov. Can't access anything else.
A spokesperson for the CFPB union said, "For example, the CFPB has gathered a wealth of proprietary information from big tech payment platforms that could be exploited by someone with a conflict of interest to corner the payments industry," pointing to a newly announced partnership between Musk's X and Visa.
The budget for 2025 CFPB is $823 million. Since it's creation in 2011, it has returned $20.7 billion dollars to consumers.
But the bureau has done a lot more than that. It's prevented consumers from being ripped off in the first place. Especially payday lenders. It's gone after the big banks for bait and switch tactics on rewards credit cards. Out and out fraud. You can see the cases that they took on in the list of enforcement actions I linked above.
Saturday night (8th), Vought sent out an email to employees to stop virtually all work, including fighting financial abuse. This is pretty much a duplicate of what Bessent had already dictated. He also said in his email that Trump had appointed him the Acting Director.
"Effective immediately, unless approved by the Acting Director or required by law, all employees, contractors, and other personnel of the bureau shall... cease all supervision and examination activity."
He posted this on X Saturday night.
DOGE at work. No money needed, thank you. We won't do any more work so we don't need any more money. Maybe use the balance to pay off all the employees we're going to fire. The "spigot" of money comes from the Federal Reserve. If he's talking about Congress, they don't appropriate the money anyway.
Only this was more than Bessent had commanded. The suspension of supervision was added to the freeze.
Dozens of House Democrats called on Bessent to "rescind what appears to be an illegal stop work order."
Apparently it was Vought who had the CFPB X account deleted.
"DOGE officials have been granted administrative access to CFPB systems, including content management system, back and systems for the content management of the bureau's website active directory of personnel."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren finally got the news about Vought taking over the CFPB.
With Trump, DOGE and Vought in charge, who's going to take them to court now? I suppose there are lots of nonprofit lawyers ready to go. I sure hope so.
Congress won't support anything against Trump or Musk. They look at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a symbol of regulations that Trump has promised to get rid of. He put out that prime directive that said for every regulation to be implemented, an agency had to get rid of 10 first, and that getting rid of the old regulations couldn't cost any money, as well as the new regulation.
Musk has a conflict of interest in dealing with the CFPB. X just created a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment platform in partnership with Visa to be launched later this year. That's exactly the kind of financial oversight that the CFPB does. That puts him in the crosshairs of criminal conflict of interest law.
Tesla has a car loan finance arrangement, and of course, the CFPB would have oversight on that transaction type of business.
The White House issued a statement on February 10th that said that the CFPB "'has long functioned as another woke, weaponized arm of the bureaucracy that leverages its power against certain industries and individuals disfavored by the so-called 'elites.'"
So, even now, the White House is showing its hand. "Woke." "Weaponized." "Bureaucracy." "Elites." Four super buzzwords all in one sentence. It's MAGA versus the English language. These words, of course, allow them to do anything they want, because they've labeled the organization as such.
Later, President Trump, in response to a reporter's question, said his goal was to eliminate the CFPB, "Because we're trying to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse."
The CFPB's main job is to ferret out fraud and fine it. The attack is under the guise of cutting down on government spending to get rid of something that's in Musk's own financial way. Just like Trump's pause on the Foreign Corruption Protection Act, so he can bribe people without breaking the law.
"Elon Musk is trying to cripple an agency that is trying to protect consumers who he is trying to sell products and services to," said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets.
With Russell Vought as the acting administrator for the CFPB, the Bureau is canceling $100 million of vendor contracts as part of its cost cutting savings, potentially impacting its cyber security efforts.
Among the cuts were 102 vendor contracts for the CFPB's enforcement division, 33 contracts linked to the directors office, and 16 contracts for the agency's supervision unit.
Notice the huge contract cuts on the enforcement division. Vought followed suit from when Scott Bessent told the agency to shut down all enforcement, regulations, making new regulations, and finalizing regulations.
On Feb.13th, Huffpost had a story on a tip line for financial institutions (banks, credit card companies, et. al.) and the public to snitch on regulators still doing their job, even after the stand down order from Bessent and Vought. Of course, the target would be the CFPB.
It's x.com@cfpb_tipline. You'll land on this. With a silver government checkmark.
Not too subtle about it. Email is
[email protected]. If you try cfpb.gov for the website, you are automatically redirected to consumerfinance.gov, which has always been the website.
A statement from the CFPB's spokesperson read, "CFPB launched a tip line today. Now-former employees of the CFPB continued their activities after the stop-work order was issued under Scott Bessent and any others found to be doing so will be dealt with accordingly."
The actual tipline for financial abuse on the website is still up and functioning, though no action will be taken unless courts order for actual work to resume.
The National Treasury Employees Union, representing the CFPB employees, has filed two suits against Vought. First is against DOGE for accessing employee data, and the other for halting the work of the Bureau's as a violation of the separation of powers principles.
In a blow to Musk's attempt to destroy the CFPB, a judge on Friday said that CFPB employees could not be dismissed without cause. This was in response to a suit filed by the National Treasury Employees Union, and the CFPB Employee Association.
The judge also ordered Vought and the CFPB not to, "take steps to reduce the amount of money available to the CFPB." Unknown as to whether this applies retroactively. Vought had previously said that the $711 million the CFPB still had in the bank was "excessive" in light of the current government situation, and said the agency didn't need any more money. Is the Federal Reserve going to give the CFPB the $825 million that was originally on their budget request whether Vought wants it or not?
There's still the whistleblower page listing the
[email protected] email and phone number. Vought hasn't replaced people, so maybe the background functions are still being done.
Vought hasn't removed the "Office of Minority and Women Inclusion at the Bureau" page. With the remove all DEI mandate, this would have been eliminated immediately. They let you know where this all came about.
"Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Act created an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion in each of the financial regulator agencies, including the CFPB. OMWI is responsible for 'all matters to the agency relating to diversity in management, employment and business activities.'" 12 U.S.C. ยง 5452.
There's still an Office of Civil Rights page. It talks about EEO matters, Equal Employment Opportunity. The No Fear Act, which is about discrimination and retaliation. Again, information about whistleblowers, and a link to the whistleblowers page.
The major link to the No Fear Act page still works.There's more information and more links to help understand it beyond what's on the Wikipedia page.
The Office of Inspector General link takes to the one for the Federal Reserve, which makes sense. There are links to CFPB reports and news on the Federal Reserve Board. On there is a really interesting article titled "Former Senior Advisor for the Federal Reserve Indicted on Charges of Economic Espionage." Dated January 31st, the indictment and arrest were for stealing Federal Reserve trade secrets for the Chinese.
The Newsroom page is still being updated with current events. On those event pages are links to summaries of enforcement actions. It's not quite the same page for enforcement actions as at the beginning of this diary, because it has the Newsroom search option.
Musk and DOGE and Vought think they've shut down the CFPB. There's still changes on their webpages up until Feb. 5th. The courts have ordered the CFPB to have employees unfired and return to work.
What this means for enforcement, supervision and promulgating new regulations is in question with Vought having issued a stop work order.
Here's Elizabeth Warren's Feb. 6th call to arms about the CFPB.
Here' the letter Warren sent to Vought and Bessent on Feb.11th, with 13 pages of Congressional signatures.
Follow the news next week to see if Elizabeth Warren's open letter, that was reported here on Feb.12th by community member prgst, asking for personal positive experiences of help by the CFPB, turns into a public relations campaign that saves the agency.
The one thing you no longer see on the CFPB website because of opening Error 404 page, is their motto: "On your side through life's financial moments." Let's make sure they can keep doing that.
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