According to thousands of 36 -hour frantic employees, the Elon Musk government’s efficiency department took place to empty the country’s best financial guard dog in a 36 -hour frantic jamming, sending pink shifts to thousands of federal employees while lambling “incompetent” agency employees on Friday, according to judicial deposits by affected employees on Friday.
Deposits offer an extraordinary overview of efforts to upset the consumer financial protection office, the agency created following the 2008 financial crisis which has become a main target of Trump supporters.
On Wednesday, according to recent judicial files, the CFPB legal director published a memo to the staff describing the agency’s surveillance and application priorities, announcing an emphasis on fraud while depreciating areas such as loans, digital payments and medical debt. The next day, the acting director of the CFPB, Russell Vought, sent a so-called memo of “reduction in strength”, informing thousands of employees they were licensed.
While a court of appeal had ruled that the layoffs would need a “particular evaluation”, which means that all the employees concerned were deemed unnecessary for the agency to meet its legal requirements, a member of the agency staff testified in a judicial file published on Friday that “all that included the number”.
The staff, who submitted a pseudonym statement Due to the fear of reprisals, said they were part of the Reduction de Force team. According to the document, the member of Doge, Gavin Kliger, managed the Rif, keeping the team for 36 consecutive hours to ensure that the opinions would be released on Thursday. “Gavin shouted on people whom he did not think they were working quickly enough to make sure they could go out on this compressed chronology, calling them incompetent,” wrote the staff.
Kliger did not respond to a request for comments.
Jason Brown, the chief of the search office for 57 people from the CFPB, testified That all high -level employees except three were dismissed Thursday, without the office being able to fulfill its statutory tasks after layoffs. “The remaining employees do not have some technical expertise to fulfill these functions by themselves,” he wrote.
Josh Friedman, an Air Force veteran working in the CFPB service service office, wrote in a statement that he had received a RIF opinion when he was used in active service at Pentagon. He testified that everything or almost all the staff of the office had been dismissed, although Dodd-Frank forces the agency to have the office.
In the reticle
The CFPB, established more than ten years ago by the historic legislative reforms of Dodd-Frank, has long been in the reticle of the Conservatives, who argue that its mandate of consumer protection is redundant with other regulatory organizations and does not subject to appropriate monitoring. After years of unsuccessful conservative legal challenges to eliminate the agency, the CFPB became a main target of many supporters of Trump during its last presidential campaign, with Musk tweet “Remove the CFPB” after Trump’s victory in November.
The Trump administration quickly tried to stop the agency’s activity and carry out generalized layoffs after taking office, but has encountered legal obstacles, including a trial of some of the targeted employees. Even with the work of the CFPB largely in the standstill and the congress repealing the recent rule of the agency, the members of the staff fought in court to be reinstated in their posts, arguing that attempts to “delete” the agency are unconstitutional.
While the judge supervising the case interrupted the CFPB to dismiss workers or to close the agency, a court of appeal last week reduced Gel, allowing the administration to partially pursue its campaign. This week’s CFPB decision to dismiss around 90% of its 1,700 employees, however, sparked a legal confrontation.
Friday, during a preliminary hearing, the judge supervising the case issuing A temporary block on layoffs, although it will continue to decide if they violate its previous prescription, with a follow -up audience scheduled for April 28. In a file on Friday, the CFPB legal director argued that he was taking the office in a “new direction”.
“I applaud the Federal Judge for Blocking Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Attempt to Fire Nearly All Of The Staff At The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and for Recognizing This Latest Move for what it is: Yet Another Illegal Effort to Gut The Agency Altogether,” Said House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) In a stément Shared with Fortune.
A spokesperson for the CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Do you work at CFPB? Do you have more information? Reach out via the signal to Leo Schwartz in856-872-2064
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
