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gavin kliger
Judge Halts—For Now—Trump Bloodbath at US Consumer Bureau
"Cutting over 80% of CFPB staff is not only unwise, it's a direct attack on the financial security of millions of Americans," said the National Treasury Employees Union president.
Apr 18, 2025
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. delivered yet another blow to U.S. President Donald Trump's effort to gut the government, pausing plans to fire nearly 1,500 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees—which would leave around 200 CFPB staff.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said during a Friday hearing that she was "deeply concerned" about the plan and would be suspending the reduction in force (RIF) until she determines if it violates her previous order, according to The Associated Press.
"I'm willing to resolve it quickly, but I'm not going to let this RIF go forward until I have," said the appointee of former President Barack Obama. She scheduled an April 28 hearing, which is set to include testimony from officials who worked on the plan.
CFPB is temporarily being led by Project 2025 architect and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. The agency is a key target of billionaire Elon Musk, the de facto chief of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In a sworn statement to the judge—submitted with the pseudonym Alex Doe due to fears of retaliation—someone on CFPB's reduction in force team said that "DOGE member Gavin Kliger managed the RIF. He kept the team up for 36 hours straight to ensure that the notices would go out yesterday (April 17). Gavin was screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough to ensure they could go out on this compressed timeline, calling them incompetent."
Doe also shared key information about CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez and Chief Legal Officer Mark Paoletta: "Team members raised the concern with Adam Martinez that there was a court order requiring that they do a particularized assessment, but they were told that all that mattered was the numbers. The direction to ignore the concern came from Mark Paoletta, who said that the numbers-based RIF should move forward, and that leadership would assume the risk."
"I understand that acting Director Russell Vought may have emailed Adam Martinez a similar direction," added Doe, whose declaration was filed by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which is fighting Trump's efforts to gut the CFPB.
As the AP reported Friday:
Martinez told the judge that he believes Kliger is an Office of Personnel Management employee detailed to the CFPB and doesn't work directly for DOGE.
Jackson said she will require Kliger to attend and possibly testify at the April 28 hearing. She said she wants to know why he was there "and what he was doing."
"We're not going to decide what happened until we know what happened," Jackson said.
The NTEU was among the groups that welcomed the judge's halt on mass firings at the agency, with union president Doreen Greenwald calling the bench order "a vindication for NTEU and its members, who wholeheartedly contend that the administration's abrupt and chaotic RIF process does not serve the American people and is a deep violation of the rights of CFPB employees."
"Cutting over 80% of CFPB staff is not only unwise, it's a direct attack on the financial security of millions of Americans," Greenwald asserted. "We will continue to advocate on behalf of the American people and NTEU members in court in response to President Trump's war on civil servants and we aim to demonstrate that these frenzied, thoughtless attempts to shutter agencies that have done nothing but faithfully serve the American people are a detriment to the public good."
Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, said in a statement that "we are gratified that Judge Jackson is not going to tolerate violation of her orders."
"The courts are the last line of defense against this administration's repeated efforts to dismantle the CFPB and clear the way for unscrupulous companies to violate the law and exploit servicemembers, veterans, and their families," Saunders stressed.
"The administration's claim that the CFPB is refocusing its priorities is a sham—the firings are an effort to completely dismantle the CFPB and to violate Congress' mandate to create a consumer watchdog and fix the gaps that led to the devastating 2007 financial crisis," she added.
"The administration's claim that the CFPB is refocusing its priorities is a sham—the firings are an effort to completely dismantle the CFPB."
Wendy Liu, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group, declared that "the Trump administration's attempt to gut the CFPB must be stopped. The court's order halting the administration's attempt at mass layoffs is critical to ensuring that the agency can continue to exist and fulfill its statutorily mandated functions."
Mike Pierce, a former CFPB official who now leads the nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center, said that "today, the courts stood between Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their illegal scheme to turn the CFPB into a hollow shell—because a watchdog that can't bark is perfect for a billionaire who can't make an honest buck."
"And let's be blunt: Musk is trying to illegally fire the federal employees who would oversee his Twitter/X payments business and already oversee Tesla's auto lending giant—and who knows what other ventures," he continued. "This chaotic, all-night RIF attempt wasn't just incompetent and unlawful, it was a confession."
"Musk knows the CFPB would crack down on his financial schemes, so he's rushing to gut the agency first," Pierce warned. "The courts saw through this today, but Trump and Musk will keep trying. They have made it their mission to encourage corporate financial fraud, no matter how many laws they break in the process. It's obvious why."
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Senate Democrats Say DOGE Has 'No Right to Hoover up Taxpayer Data' at IRS
Operatives of Elon Musk, warned Sen. Elizabeth Warren, "are attempting to access confidential tax information—tax returns, bank data, Social Security numbers—for millions of Americans."
Feb 17, 2025
As Americans prepare to file their taxes ahead of the April 15 deadline, two Democratic senators warned Monday that billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk's arrival at the Internal Revenue Service raises serious privacy concerns and could significantly impact the tens of millions of people who count on their tax refunds each year to pay bills, pad their emergency savings, and afford other essentials.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the advisory body created by President Donald Trump and headed by Musk, has set its sights on the IRS as it works to gut agencies across the federal government—with the data of millions of ordinary taxpayers now among the troves of personal information DOGE is trying to seize.
As The Washington Post reported, the IRS is considering a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to give DOGE employees access to agency systems and datasets including the Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS).
The system allows a limited number of IRS employees to access IRS accounts of every individual taxpayer, business, and nonprofit in the country, including people's personal identification numbers and bank information, and enables them to change transaction data.
DOGE's "meddling with IRS systems in the middle of tax filing season could, inadvertently or otherwise, cause breakdowns that may delay the issuance of tax refunds indefinitely," said Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The MOU states that Gavin Kliger, a software engineer working with DOGE, should have access to the IDRS, enabling DOGE to "eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and improve government performance to better serve the people."
According to the memo reviewed by the Post, Kliger—who sources said had not officially been granted the access mentioned in the MOU as of Sunday night—will be tasked with consulting on modernizing the IRS' systems.
Even though outside contractors are used for technical upgrades or fixes to a system widely recognized as "antiquated," the Post noted that it is "highly unusual" for a political appointee of partisan body like DOGE to obtain access to the IDRS.
"The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal," Nina Olson, who served as the agency's national taxpayer advocate for nearly two decades, told the newspaper. "Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated."
In their letter to acting IRS Commissioner Douglas O'Donnell, Warren and Wyden (D-Ore.) noted that the tax code has long prohibited "executive branch influence over taxpayer audits and other investigations."
"These prohibitions have long prevented political appointees in previous administrations from accessing the private tax records of hundreds of millions of Americans, and allowing DOGE officials sweeping access these systems may be in violation of these statutes," said Warren and Wyden, who serve as ranking members of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and Senate Finance Committees, respectively. "Violations of these taxpayer privacy laws, including unauthorized access to or disclosure of tax returns and return information, can result in criminal penalties, including incarceration."
Without naming Trump, the lawmakers referenced Charles Littlejohn, the IRS contractor who was sentenced last year to five years in federal prison for leaking the president's tax returns to The New York Times after Trump refused to publicly disclose them.
"Until we fought to the Supreme Court and won, the president shielded his tax returns from the people," said the Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee in a social media post. "Now, he's given yours to the richest man in the world."
Warren and Wyden wrote that "software engineers working for Musk seeking to gain access to tax return information have no right to hoover up taxpayer data and send that data back to any other part of the federal government and may be breaking the law if they are doing so."
In addition to seeking access to the personal financial data of millions of Americans, DOGE is reportedly preparing to oversee the firing of 10,000 probationary employees at the IRS.
"Any delay in refunds could be financially devastating to millions of Americans who plan their budgets around timely refunds every spring," said Warren and Wyden. "We demand that the IRS immediately clarify the extent to which DOGE team members may have inspected or be seeking to inspect the private tax return information of millions of Americans and whether taxpayer privacy laws are being enforced to prevent unauthorized disclosure and intrusions."
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