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"It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
Consumer advocates on Friday called on allies to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency after reports indicated DOGE personnel had entered the agency's office and possibly obtained access to its online databases.
Members of the CFPB Union NTEU 335, part of the National Treasury Employees Union, published a press release, later deleted from their website, noting that the names of three staffers of DOGE appeared in the consumer protection agency's internal staff directory Thursday evening—signaling that the CFPB is the latest target of Musk's illegal plunder of numerous federal offices.
Numerous outlets—includingWired and Punchbowl News—confirmed that the DOGE personnel had been granted access to CFPB offices and databases. Politico, citing people familiar with the developments, also reported the three individuals had been added as "senior advisers" to the agency.
The CFPB Union, in the now-deleted statement, identified the DOGE staffers as former Big Pharma lobbyist Chris Young; former Tesla and X employee Nikhil Rajpal; and Gavin Kliger, an "Elon fanboy" who graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 2020.
"When he's not stealing Americans' private information with DOGE, Kliger enjoys writing lengthy essays defending rapists and retweeting white supremacists," said the union's statement, citing the staffer's Substack where he has written positively about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), both accused of sexual abuse. "Kliger's lawyer daddy works at Experian, which is the same company CFPB sued in January for covering up errors on credit reports with sham investigations."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators."
The union further mocked Kliger's "alleged" coding career and said that in contrast to the "zero to three git commits" he made in the last year, "workers at the CFPB returned $1.3 billion to scammed Americans in that time."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators," said the workers.
"While acting Director [Scott] Bessent allows Musk's operatives to bypass cybersecurity policies and wreak havoc with their amateur code skills inside CFPB's once-secure systems, CFPB Union members fight to protect our jobs so we can continue protecting Americans from scammers with conflicts of interest like Musk," they said.
According to Wired's reporting:
In an email early Friday morning, CFPB staff were told that several people from DOGE—including [Rajpal, Kliger, and Young]—entered the agency building Thursday evening. The email stated that they would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment, following a message sent Thursday by CFPB chief operating officer Adam Martinez confirming that the DOGE employees were to receive "read-only access."
"DOGE arrived tonight and will be back tomorrow. They are going to need read-only access to our HR (HR Connect/NFC), procurement (PRISM), and finance (Discoverer) system," said Martinez. "I let them know that we utilize BFS/ARC so if they already have access, then they should be able to pull our data. Otherwise, if they do not have access to BFS/ARC, then we will need to work with them to fill out the necessary forms to gain access." BFS/ARC is the Bureau of the Fiscal Service's Administrative Resource Center, which provides administrative services, like timekeeping travel days or benefits, for a number of government agencies.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich noted that DOGE's targeting of the CFPB comes days after Trump dismissed former Director Rohit Chopra.
"American's financial privacy and safety [is] at risk as DOGE arrives at CFPB," said the Center for Digital Democracy, in response to various reporting. "The CFPB has saved American taxpapers and consumers billions... Undermining American financial security must be stopped."
In recent days, DOGE employees have arrived at the Departments of Labor, Education, and the Treasury, among other federal agencies, seizing access to data about millions of Americans, setting up illegal servers, and placing employees on administrative leave.
The White House and Musk have claimed the effort is aimed at reducing "waste" and improving "efficiency" within government, but comments from U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week signaled the administration is searching for ways to slash spending for numerous public services in the interest of extending the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthiest earners.
The union suggested Musk wants to take over the CFPB, which he called to "delete" late last year, to clear the way for a partnership between his social media platform, X, and Visa. The credit card company wants to offer payments on the platform, and "notably, the CFPB recently obtained the authority to supervise major payment apps," said the NTEU.
Earlier this week, DOGE staffers arrived at the Department of Labor, which has filed multiple complaints against Musk's companies.
"The world's richest man just dispatched his minions to root around the systems of a government watchdog responsible for policing payment schemes like the one just announced for his own company," Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director of the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in response to the union's account. "It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
"Musk’s dreams of an 'everything app' that reaches into people's bank accounts paired with his sweeping, unchecked access to the levers of government opens up the potential for breathtaking corruption," said Peterson-Cassin. "His intrusion into CFPB systems also sends a clear message that he has no interest whatsoever in policing his own conflicts of interest. Musk must be stopped from dismantling the very mechanisms of the federal government that can prevent him from looting the American people."
Appointment of billionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to lead key agency, warned one advocate, "opens the floodgates for corporate abuse and financial scams."
U.S. President Donald Trump announced Monday that he has installed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, to serve as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that has long been in the crosshairs of Elon Musk, Republican lawmakers, and corporate America.
The news comes days after Trump fired Rohit Chopra, the consumer champion who served as head of the CFPB under former President Joe Biden and secured more than $6 billion in consumer relief during his tenure.
Soon after taking charge of the CFPB, Bessent ordered the bureau to "stop all rulemaking, communications, litigation, and other activities," Bloomberg Lawreported Monday, citing an email to agency staff.
"A source inside the bureau who asked to remain anonymous said the order appeared to shut down the CFPB altogether, for the time being," the outlet added.
Politicoreported that Bessent also directed staff to "suspend the effective dates of rules that haven't gone into effect yet." Among the rules now in limbo is a measure that, if enacted, would save consumers billions of dollars per year in overdraft fees.
Tony Carrk, executive director of the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement Monday that "we can only hope that Bessent continues former Director Rohit Chopra's legacy standing up to price gouging and fraud, but I fear his appointment opens the floodgates for corporate abuse and financial scams."
"President Trump has held himself up as a champion for working Americans, but his plans for the CFPB are just another example of the administration's billionaires-first, consumers-last agenda," said Carrk. "While he parades a crowd of corporate lobbyists, billionaire donors, and Wall Street insiders like Scott Bessent to lead our country, we're looking at the end of basic protections for American consumers."
Trump's decision to place a Cabinet official in charge of the CFPB mirrors the approach he took during his first White House term, when he installed CFPB opponent Mick Mulvaney—who was then in charge of the Office of Management and Budget—at the helm of the consumer bureau.
"In both cases," The American Bankernoted Monday, "Trump is picking a director who is expected to move quickly to freeze existing rules and enforcement actions, while also halting and starting to rescind all nonbinding interpretive rules, guidance, and proposals. One of Mulvaney's first moves was to strip the agency's fair-lending office of enforcement powers, demoting the fair-lending division, which had previously been equal alongside supervision and enforcement."
Bessent, whose elevation to acting head of the CFPB was applauded by bank lobbyists, is currently facing close scrutiny and backlash over his decision last week to give Musk agents access to the Treasury Department's payment system.
In a letter to Bessent on Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—an architect of the CFPB—expressed alarm that "as one of your first acts as secretary, you appear to have handed over a highly sensitive system responsible for millions of Americans' private data—and a key function of government—to an unelected billionaire and an unknown number of his unqualified flunkies."
"The American people deserve answers about your role in this mismanagement, which threatens the privacy and economic security of every American," Warren added.
"For all the claims Trump and the GOP have made about being the voice of working-class voters, firing Chopra... only satisfies unscrupulous corporations and unelected billionaires like Elon Musk," one advocate said.
U.S. President Donald Trump moved Saturday morning to fire Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, who had earned the praise of consumer advocates and the ire of Wall Street for his efforts to return more than $6 billion to ordinary Americans.
Chopra announced his firing on social media, also sharing a letter to the president in which he touted the work of the CFPB and outlined possible priorities for his successor.
"Every day, Americans from across the country shared their ideas and experiences with us," Chopra wrote to his followers. "You helped us hold powerful companies and their executives accountable for breaking the law, and you made our work better. Thank you."
In his letter, Chopra mounted a full-throated defense of the CFPB, which has often been attacked by Republicans and pro-Trump figures, including billionaire Elon Musk. He wrote that the 2008 financial crisis "made Americans question whether regulators and law enforcement would hold companies and their executives accountable for their mismanagement or wrongdoing," especially since many of the companies responsible for the crash only got larger and more powerful following a taxpayer-funded bailout.
"That's what agencies like CFPB work to fix: to make sure that the laws of our land aren't just words on a page," he wrote, adding that "with so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, agencies like the CFPB have never been more critical."
Chopra, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden to head the CFPB in 2021, said that he was "proud the CFPB had done so much to restore the rule of law" during his tenure.
"Since 2021, we have returned billions of dollars from repeat offenders and other bad actors, implemented dormant legal authorities and long-overdue rules required by law, and given more freedom and bargaining leverage to families navigating a complex and confusing financial system," he wrote.
"If civil society does its job, every person unnecessarily taken advantage of by a financial institution will attribute the blame to the right person—Donald Trump."
Chopra also touted the CFPB's regulation of junk fees, inaccurate medical bills, and digital surveillance by Big Tech. Under Chopra, the CFPB sued major financial institutions such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase and finalized a rule to strike around $49 billion worth of medical debt from credit reports, according to CNN.
With Chopra in charge, the bureau "has fought against junk fees, repeat offenders, big tech evasions, and corporate deception. It has championed competition, transparency, accountability, and consumer financial health," Adam Rust, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, said in a statement reported by NPR.
Despite the fact that Chopra was originally appointed by Trump in 2018 to serve on the Federal Trade Commission, Chopra's firing was expected as soon as Trump took office, with both major banks and tech companies urging the new president to oust him.
While anticipated, the move was criticized by progressive advocates and lawmakers.
"For all the claims Trump and the GOP have made about being the voice of working-class voters, firing Chopra and attacking the CFPB only satisfies unscrupulous corporations and unelected billionaires like Elon Musk," Revolving Door Project founder and executive director Jeff Hauser said in a statement. "If civil society does its job, every person unnecessarily taken advantage of by a financial institution will attribute the blame to the right person—Donald Trump."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called his firing "an enormous loss for the American people."
"My friend Rohit Chopra has done an incredible job leading the CFPB—standing up to big corporations, protecting consumer data, and saving money for poor and working families," Jayapal said on social media.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote on social media: "Under Rohit Chopra's tenure, the CFPB continued to serve as a shining example of government working on behalf of the people. Chopra took on corporate greed, unnecessary junk fees, predatory lending, and other financial shenanigans. It's telling that Trump just fired him."
According toThe New York Times, the CFPB under Trump is expected by financial industry officials to roll back some of Chopra's regulations and to issue fewer new rules and weaken enforcement.
However, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pointed out that this would run counter to Trump's own campaign rhetoric.
"President Trump campaigned on capping credit card interest rates at 10% and lowering costs for Americans. He needs a strong CFPB and a strong CFPB director to do that," she said in a statement. "But if President Trump and Republicans decide to cower to Wall Street billionaires and destroy the agency, they will have a fight on their hands."
Chopra himself, in his farewell letter to Trump, suggested steps the CFPB could take under new leadership. These included:
"We have also analyzed your promising proposal on capping credit card interest rates, and we see a path for enacting meaningful reform," he wrote to Trump. "I hope that the CFPB will continue to be a pillar of restoring and advancing economic liberty in America."