The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Trump-appointed leadership plans to fire nearly all its 1,700 employees while “winding down” the agency, according to testimony from employees.
In a trove of statements released late Thursday, federal employees said that the mass layoff was discussed in meetings they attended this month with senior CFPB leaders and members of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“My team was directed to assist with terminating the vast majority of CFPB employees as quickly as possible,” said an employee identified as Alex Doe, a pseudonym used out of fear of retaliation.
Doe said the plan from CFPB leaders and DOGE was to cut the bureau’s workforce in three phases. It would first eliminate probationary and term employees, then carry out a wave of about 1,200 layoffs, leaving a skeleton crew of a few hundred workers.
“Finally, the Bureau would ‘reduce altogether’ within 60-90 days by terminating most of its remaining staff,” Doe said.
The workers’ testimony comes at a crucial time for the CFPB, the agency created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis caused by irresponsible lending. Since DOGE operatives first arrived at the CFPB this month, the bureau has shuttered its Washington headquarters, initiated the first round of layoffs, and told those who remain to stop nearly all work.
The filings were made in the case started by a CFPB union that suspended acting Director Russell Vought’s moves to shutter the bureau. After the CFPB fired about 200 probationary and term employees, the agency’s actions were put on hold until a March 3 hearing.
The documents show an apparent disconnect between some of the external messaging from Vought and the behind-the-scenes activity at the bureau.
“CFPB leadership has also been apparently lying to us that it will allow us to follow the law and our statutory obligations to protect consumers,” said a current CFPB employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions. “Those of us employed at the CFPB will not stop fighting for our right to get back to the work of protecting consumers that Congress has required of us.”
In a motion filed Monday in the case, Vought pushed back against the idea that he planned to eliminate the CFPB.
“The predicate to running a ‘more streamlined and efficient bureau’ is that there will continue to be a CFPB,” he wrote.
But the Trump administration’s plan was to take the CFPB down to the barest minimum staffing required under law: Just five CFPB employees would remain, either in a standalone office or folded into another regulatory body, the workers testified.
In meetings between Feb. 18 and Feb. 25, “staff were told by Senior Executives that the CFPB would be eliminated except for the five statutorily mandated positions,” said another current CFPB employee, this one identified as Drew Doe.
“One Senior Executive said that CFPB will become a ‘room at Treasury, White House, or Federal Reserve with five men and a phone in it,’” Doe said.
The employees said that, if directed to by the court, they would provide their names and titles under seal.
