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Before a last -minute intervention by a federal judge, officials of the Trump administration planned to separate the financial protection office from consumers until there was nothing from the agency other than a room with “five men and a telephone in it”, according to current and old employees.
Their written testimony was contained in documents submitted Thursday as part of a trial aimed at interrupting mass layoffs at the besieged office. They offer new details step by step on how initiates say that the administration planned to decimate the regulator responsible for monitoring how large banks, mortgage lenders and other financial services companies treat customers.
They also describe how the key functions that the agency is required to fulfill under federal law, such as the exploitation of a portal of consumer complaints, has largely ceased to operate thanks to the cancellation of almost all its external contracts and the work prescription issued by the acting director Russell Vought.
The main judge Amy Berman Jackson of the American district court of the Columbia district temporarily blocked Trump officials dismissed CFPB staff two weeks ago in response to a judicial challenge to a union representing federal employees, who claimed that the administration planned to effectively eliminate the agency by ending 95% of its workforce originally 1700, ending its leases and announcing its external contracts.
The Trump administration seeks to Lift your order And made this week this week in a motion that he only tries to “rationalize” the CFPB rather than delete it entirely, and that he continued to maintain his functions required by law.
But according to the deposits on Thursday, the Trump team – with the support of the Elon Musk government ministry – planned to leave a version of CFPB rump in place that existed only.
Operating director Adam Martinez twoof Declarations submitted by current anonymous employees. The senior executives explained to the staff “the writing was on the wall” and would have “shared that the intention of the management was to dismiss everyone, but the five positions required by the Dodd-Frank law”, which established the CFPB.
“A senior executive said that the CFPB will become a” treasure room, the White House or the Federal Reserve with five men and a telephone “, an employee was identified as being being Drew Doe testified.
Trump officials planned to dismiss staff in three phases, according to documents, starting with recent hirings that were in probation or long -term limited. A member of the DOGE team named Jordan Winck would have ordered the CFPB staff to end 1,200 others of his workers before February 14. Most remaining employees were to be eliminated from 60 to 90 days later.
“The office intended to comply and dismiss the vast majority of employees remaining on February 14,” wrote a CFPB staff member identified as Alex Doe. “The only reason he did not do it because of the order of this court temporarily prohibiting it from doing so.”
People attend a demonstration in support of the Consumer Financial Protection Office on February 10 at the CFPB headquarters in Washington. (AP photo / Jacquelyn Martin) ·Associated Press
According to declarations, Trump and Doge officials quickly canceled around $ 200 million of $ 227 million in office circulation contracts with external suppliers providing everything, from the legal testimony to cybersecurity. Some of the data that these suppliers have maintained may be permanently lost.
“I have been responsible for contracts for many years, thanks to multiple changes in the administration,” wrote a contract manager identified as Charlie Doe. “The events of the past few weeks are different from everything I have ever seen in an agency during any change of administration (or at any other time). The instructions for contractual agents did not reflect a change in political orientation, but rather a wholesale termination of the contracts necessary to maintain the CFPB in progress. »»
In addition, Director of digital services CFPB Adam Scott written in a declaration He was told that Vought had personally made the decision to delete the CFPB home page.
In the government’s judicial file earlier this week, Martinez, COO, Let’s come back refused that the office was actually trying to empty its own chests by transferring its money back to the federal reserve. But an employee identified himself as Blake Doe contradicted He on Thursday, writing in a statement that he had seen “an email dated February 11, 2025, in which Mr. Martinez said that financial director Jafnar Gueye was in communication with the federal reserve on how to return money in the Federal Reserve or the Treasury.”
According to deposits, certain key functions that the CFPB is required to maintain by law now only partially operate thanks to the order of stopping Vought. Its consumer complaint portal is able to automatically process certain bids, and somewhere approximately 10,000 complaints can still wait for manual examination, according to A declaration.
The post of CFPB student loans is also vacant, and its general mediator, who said that administration officials, would have taken over, would have been sentenced not to work.
A new audience in the pursuit is scheduled for next week. Friday, 203 Democratic members of the Congress submitted a Amicus brief In the event, he asked the court to prevent the Trump administration from closing the CFPB “by Fiat”.
Meanwhile, even if most of the CFPB work remains on a break, he has rejected many of his in suspense application. After abandoning five costumes on Thursday, he rejected another – this time against Transunion credit rating agency – Friday afternoon.
Jordan Weissmann is a senior journalist at Yahoo Finance.
