On February 11, 189 congressional Democrats sent a letter to Acting Director Russell Vought of the CFPB and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressing concerns regarding the involvement of DOGE at the CFPB and the orders to halt the agency’s operations.
The letter described an incident on February 6th where at least three employees from DOGE’s team reportedly entered CFPB headquarters and obtained access to sensitive information, including internal staff records and consumer data (covered by InfoBytes here). The letter also raised concerns about consumer privacy and the potential impact on law enforcement and the protection of confidential information collected from major financial institutions. The letter also asserted a potential conflict of interest if Elon Musk’s social media company launched a payments system — given the data the CFPB has related to his company’s competitors.
Additionally, the letter outlined a series of recent directives from Secretary Bessent and Acting Director Vought, starting with Bessent’s order on February 3 to freeze all CFPB rulemakings, litigation, enforcement activities, and external communications unless explicitly approved by leadership (covered by InfoBytes here). The letter also noted Vought expanded this order on February 8th “to include monitoring big banks, predatory lenders, and other financial services firms for illegal activity,” for closing the Washington, D.C., headquarters temporarily, instructing staff to not perform any tasks, and declining to accept scheduled funding for the CFPB from Fed funds.
The letter argued these actions dismantle the CFPB’s ability to protect consumers from predatory lending, scams, illegal foreclosures, car repossessions, or debanking. It concluded with a request to remove Musk’s operatives from the CFPB and allow the Bureau to continue its mission.
