The Ministry of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to fire the “majority” of its employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Agent employee – those who use pseudonyms for fear of retaliation told federal court in a declaration of oath.
Seven and five former CFPB employees currently filed the declaration as part of the National Financial Employees Union lawsuit against Russell Vauth, Director of Management and Budget, currently acting director of the CFPB. The union is about to halt the already-in-progress demolition of its financial services watchdog. We categorize thousands of consumer complaints each week about financial products, and as of 2023, we returned $17.5 billion to consumers over 12 years, including financial compensation and debt cancellation. Earlier this month, Verge reported that around 20 engineers from the agency were suddenly fired on a weekday night amid a wider layoff. The court temporarily bans the CFPB from further cuts.
Four of the current seven employees refused to publicly provide their names, but offered to identify themselves to the court under a seal. In the declaration stipulated under the perjury penalty, employees described the rushed firing process organized by Doge, and after the agency put all their might, they explained their rough thoughts on who would handle consumer protection issues and CFPB data. According to one of the declarations, the suspension order at the agency prevented staff from even performing the necessary tasks “to maintain the security and stability of CFPB’s computer systems.”
One current employee who used the pseudonym Alex Doe said that around February 13, the team was “instructed to help the majority of CFPB employees close as soon as possible.” Alex Doe explained the three-stage approach. First, fire probation employees who are not used to their agents. Second, “wiring about 1,200 additional employees by eliminating the entire office, department and unit.” Third, most of the remaining employees will be terminated within 60-90 days and “leave the station that cannot actually perform functions or has no station at all.”
The speed of recent layoffs required “bypassing some normal procedures, safeguards and regulations.”
The CFPB is responsible for ensuring that companies that provide financial services do not mislead consumers or clean up the law. Consumers can file credit card and loan complaints with agents, and agents can also begin enforcement actions and rules creation as previously confirmed to monitor large digital payment providers as well as banks.
According to Alex Doe, the speed of layoffs has had to “bypass some normal procedures, safeguards and rules.” They add that only court orders that temporarily prevented further dismissals have stopped the remaining dismissals from passing on Valentine’s Day. The CFPB and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At a meeting after the court’s order, CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez told staff “he still didn’t know which agencies would play a similar role in the CFPB or whether the department itself would continue to be technically present with a small number of staff to perform those functions.”
The second current employee who used the pseudonym Blake Do has challenged the courts of Martinez’s declaration that the CFPB’s current-restricted student loan ombudsman could rely on the agency’s general ombudsman office. “But that’s not possible because employees at the average Ombudsman office are ordered not to do the work,” writes Blake Doe. Contrary to Martinez’s declaration, Blake Daw says he saw evidence that the CFPB is in contact with the Federal Reserve on how to return the money there and how to return it to the Treasury Department.
“The hasty end of almost all of the department’s contracts has led to the system and services being turned off before the CFPB or contractor returned the CFPB data.”
Other declarations may pose issues regarding privacy and security training for DOGE staff, handle CFPB systems, and end concerns about agency data that may include HR and reasonable accommodation records.
A CFPB Contracting Officer named Charlie Doe said that it was not included in the contract termination notice, which he believed to have not included a regular data retention notice to ensure that CFPB data is not lost. Between February 11 and 14, the agency issued termination notices for more than 100 contracts, including those that maintain a consumer complaint database and ensure that it scrubs personally identifiable information, ignoring feedback from employees who need the contracts necessary to comply with the law.
“The hasty end of almost all of the department’s contracts has led to the system and services being turned off before the CFPB or contractor returned the CFPB data,” writes fourth employee, Drew Doe. “Some of the CFPB data may have been deleted as not all systems have offline backups. Among other things, this data may include CFPB personnel records, reasonable accommodation records, ombudsman records, and equal records of employment opportunities. Data may not be recovered, and as of February 25th, CFPB is currently trying to figure out which systems and services have records.”
Some of the seemingly rushed works are clearly cautious. Adam Scott, director of CFPB Digital Services, filed the email exchange he copied with to court. There, Christopher Chilbert, the agency’s chief information officer, told employees that he understands that CFPB’s deleted homepage is a decision by Vought.
Drew Doe claims that Doge staff were given full privileged access to CFPB systems and data without following the processes normally required by CFPB, such as signing documents on CFPB systems and data governance. At meetings over the past few weeks, they added that senior executives told agency staff “the CFPB would be in their names alone.”
