Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
After several weeks of quiet, the DOGE wrecking crew descended on the CFPB on a Thursday in early February. By Friday, they had been granted admin access to multiple systems with the support of acting director Russell Vought and had deleted the homepage for the website. By Monday, the entire workforce of the agency had been place on administrative leave and blocked from accessing the building. Despite some still-lingering concerns about Musk gaining access to proprietary financial data for his competitors, DOGE’s main focus at the agency was making an example of it, with many of the crew who had demolished USAID taking part in this effort. Their attempt at forcing mass layoffs on February 14 was stopped at only the last minute by a judge’s temporary restraining order, and DOGE assisted with another reduction-in-force (RIF) for 80% of the agency on April 17th, only for it to be overturned by the same judge. Today, the CFPB is still alive, but in a precarious limbo that might make months or year to resolve.
Positions
| Position | Date | Person |
|---|---|---|
|
GSA CFPB
2/07-3/04
detail end |
detail court doc | |
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OPM CFPB
2/07-5/08
fired |
detail Bloomberg | |
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GSA CFPB
2/07
|
detail court doc | |
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OPM CFPB
2/07-3/21
detail end |
detail court doc | |
|
DOGE CFPB
2/07-3/04
|
detail «detail ended because he became a full-time CFPB employee on 3/5» court doc | |
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OPM CFPB
2/07
|
detail | |
|
CFPB
2/08
|
appointed Acting Director (supervisory) CNN | |
|
CFPB
3/05
|
converted to permanent position Expert/Consultant |
Systems
| System | Dates | Access |
|---|---|---|
| AD |
A system for controlling access to other systems within an agency
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| website |
This is a stand-in for whatever website platform an agency is using
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| Concur |
Shared service for booking government travel
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| DI |
Provides information on CFPB reporting structure
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| G-invoice |
A shared service from BFS for handling intergovernmental invoicing
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| HRConnect |
HR system for tracking employee information
|
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| IPP |
|
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| Microsoft Entra ID |
A centralized identity provider used to support single-sign-on (SSO) and centralize access control for agencies.
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| Sharepoint |
Microsoft service for sharing documents within an organization
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| OBI |
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| PAC |
Possibly a system for controlling and monitoring physical access to CFPB buildings
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| Power Automate |
A Microsoft tool for automating tasks that operate on documents and providing to staff
|
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| PRISM |
System for tracking procurement and contracting
|
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| oneARC |
A system for tracking business processes within Salesforce
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| USA Staffing |
A platform for federal agencies to recruit and onboard employees.
|
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| WebTA |
System for tracking timecards
|
Events
| Agency | Date | Event |
|---|---|---|
| February 2025 | ||
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2/01
|
Disruption:
Trump fires Rohit Chopra, the independent director of the CFPB
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2/03
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2/06
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2/07
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2/07
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Official:
OMB director Russell Vought is named the new acting head of the CFPB. The CFPB Chief Legal Counsel is also replaced by Mark Paoletta, a close associate of Russell Vought.
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2/07
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||
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2/07
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2/10
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Disruption:
In an email sent to all staff, Russell Vought orders the CFPB’s headquarters to be indefinitely closed. He also orders: “Please do not perform any work tasks. If there are any urgent matters, please alert me through Mark Paoletta, Chief Legal Officer, to get approval in writing before performing any work task. Otherwise, employees should stand down from performing any work task.”
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2/11
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||
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2/11
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Disruption:
CFPB Contracting Officers (COs) are ordered to terminate the vast majority of CFPB’s contracts over the weekend (“We need to get these Termination Notifications out ASAP.”) This includes “Enforcement (102 contracts), Supervision (16 contracts), External Affairs (3 contracts), Consumer Response (20 contracts), Office of Director (33 contracts), and Legal Division (all except 2 contracts)”
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2/12
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||
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2/13
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Disruption:
The CFPB RIF team, including Adam Martinez meets with Jordan Wick, Jeremy Lewin, and OPM officials. Jeremy Lewin and Jordan Wick talk off screen with Acting Director Vought, and Wick tells the group that they want formal RIF notices to go out no later than February 14. They receive a template from OPM for firing 1200 employees “at night on the 13th.”
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2/13
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||
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2/14
|
Disruption:
The CFPB’s videos are removed from its YouTube channel
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2/14
|
Legal:
The judge, Amy Berman-Jackson grants a temporary restraining order against CFPB leadership until a hearing for a preliminary injunction to prevent them from shuttering the agency by eliminating staff and canceling all contracts. DOGE and CFPB leadership had been racing to eliminate 1175 positions before the restraining order was announced.
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2/18
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Disruption:
An employee requests to repair the CFPB homepage that was purposefully deleted by DOGE, but that action is refused by order of Russell Vought. Other work is allowed for digital teams.
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2/20
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Disruption:
At an internal planning meeting for the temporarily paused Reduction In Force, CFPB COO Adam Martinez confirms the White House plan was to completely end the CFPB within 30 days. The plan was to reduce the CFPB to “five guys and a phone,” ie to the minimum number of positions that were mandated by the text of Dodd-Frank (the bill that created the CFPB). Staff were informed there was no need to abide by federal data retention regulations because there would be nothing left of the agency to maintain.
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2/20
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Disruption:
Jordan Wick emails Russell Vought asking for approval to cut an additional $8.4 million of contracts at the CFPB
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| March 2025 | ||
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3/02
|
Official:
The night before the hearing for a preliminary injunction in NTEU v. Vought, Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta sends out an email to all staff telling them that they should have known all along that the stop work order wasn’t meant to cover statutorily mandated work. This is clearly a blatant attempt to spin the narrative and claim the agency has not been stopped from performing its statutory duties. The judge later describes this as “[insulting] the reader’s intelligence when he feigns surprise that few employees were working.”
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3/03
|
Legal:
In a hearing for a preliminary injunction, Judge Amy Berman Jackson expresses fears that CFPB will be “choked out of its very existence” while the litigation progresses. Concerned with misleading answers from the admininistration’s lawyers, she orders a evidentiary hearing in a week and continues the restraining order against layoffs.
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3/04
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Offboard:
Luke Farritor officially offboards from the CFPB and all his system access is revoked. The reason given is that his detail had ended.
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3/04
|
Onboard:
Jordan Wick is converted from a detailee to a full employee of the CFPB. This is in accordance with a DOGE strategy to avoid disclosure in CREW v. DOGE by moving DOGE staff into other agencies.
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3/21
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Offboard:
Nikhil Rajpal officially offboards from the CFPB, because his detail is concluded. It is later revealed that he was not granted any system access nor did he perform any actions during his time at the CFPB.
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3/28
|
Legal:
In a sweeping ruling, judge Amy Berman Jackson grants a preliminary injunction for the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) against Russell Vought, the acting CFPB director. In her ruling, she declares that it is plain that the administration intended to destroy the agency and she found significant parts of its testimony unreliable. In her injunction, she orders the admininistration must refrain from any firing any employee of the CFPB, restore any contracts that were in place before February 11th, reinstate all probationary employees that were fired, ensure that no agency data is deleted and rescind the stop-work order. It is immediately appealed by the administration.
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| April 2025 | ||
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4/10
|
Official:
Gavin Kliger receives a warning from the CFPB Ethics Office that his stock holdings present serious concerns about a possible conflict of interest. He is required to divest himself of prohibited holdings by May 8th.
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4/11
|
Legal:
A three-judge appeal panel for the DC Circuit issues a ruling on the appeal for Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s preliminary injunction in NTEU v. Vought. The appeals court stays a measure that prevent CFPB leadership from enforcing work stoppages for non-statutory work. It also allows CFPB leadership to conduct a reduction in force, provided that they conduct a “particularized assessment” for the process.
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4/12
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Interagency:
CFPB leadership under Russell Vought decides to use this opportunity to attempt a massive RIF again. Emailing from his USAID email account, Jeremy Lewin kicks things off by providing Gavin Kliger and Adam Martinez with a letter to use for RIFs at the CFPB.
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4/12
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Interagency:
Emailing from his CFPB account, Jeremy Lewin shares the documentation for the upcoming CFPB RIF with DOGE staff posted at several agencies. It’s unclear if they are representing their individual agencies or DOGE in the communication.
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4/12
|
Official:
Jeremy Lewin emails CFPB leadership asking for full global admininstrative access for Entra and HRConnect to be restored for the DOGE engineers. Weirdly, this list includes Luke Farritor who offboarded at CFPB on 2025-03-04. This request is denied by the agency CIO.
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4/12
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Interagency:
Gavin Kliger begins working with Adam Martinez of CFPB and Jeremy Lewin at USAID on the infrastructure for a massive RIF at the CFPB
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4/13
|
Access:
In an email, CFPB CIO Chris Chilbert reports that Gavin Kliger has been granted access to Ops HC - Prod to build the RIF automation. He also asks to confirm that Gavin Kliger should have his access revoked to systems that let him deactivate employee email accounts or lock them out of their laptops
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4/13
|
Interagency:
Jeremy Lewin has a followup Teams call with CFPB chief legal counsel Mark Paoletta to plan for the upcoming massive RIF at the CFPB
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4/13
|
Access:
In an email, CFPB CIO Chris Chilbert informs Gavin Kliger that there is no global admin access that can be granted for his requests
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4/13
|
Interagency:
Adam Martinez responds in the affirmative to an email (contents redacted in court filings) requesting items/access for unspecified people to conduct the RIF. Several DOGE staff are also cc’ed on the message
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4/16
|
Interagency:
Noah Peters at OPM denies the CFPB request for an “emergency” 30-day notice for a RIF at the CFPB
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4/17
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4/17
|
Disruption:
According to sworn testimony by Alex Doe, the CFPB RIF team was forced to work for 36 hours straight and subjected to verbal abuse by Gavin Kliger
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4/18
|
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| May 2025 | ||
|
5/01
|
Legal:
The D.C. Circuit appeals panel modifies its initial stay of the preliminary injunction that had allowed RIFs after a particularized assessment. In light of the recent attempted RIF, they decide to disallow any RIFs while the appeal of the injunction is being considered. CFPB staff remain at work, but lacking direction from leadership and still barred from many work actions.
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5/08
|
Offboard:
Gavin Kliger leaves the CFPB, officially because his detail had ended but it is coincidentally also the day he would be in ethics violation for having not sold stock holdings prohibited to CFBP staff.
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5/13
|
Disruption:
The CFPB, still under the acting leadership of Russell Vought, withdraws a rule proposed in December that would limit the ability of data brokers to sell sensitive information by placing them under the oversight of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
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Questions
- Why was Gavin Kliger given admin for access control systems at the CFPB?