DOGE-backed halt at CFPB comes amid Musk’s plans for ‘X’ digital wallet

In another weekend takeover of a federal agency’s operations, staffers from an efficiency initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk helped to effectively shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — as they gained access to an array of the bureau’s protected information.

The actions began last Thursday, when four young staffers working under Musk for the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, showed up at CFPB’s Washington headquarters. At first, they had what was described as read-only access to a limited array of documents, including the agency’s internal personnel files, procurement records and budgeting and financial data, according to an email shared among CFPB officials.

Then, late Friday night, the DOGE staffers were granted access to all the CFPB’s data systems, including sensitive bank examination and enforcement records, according to five people familiar with the matter and emails seen by Bloomberg News. The people asked not to be identified, citing concerns over potential retribution. By Sunday, the agency was a skeleton, with its funding limited and activities suspended.

Musk, whose social-media platform X has recently begun firming up plans to enter the online payments industry, had already predicted the demise of the consumer-watchdog agency. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The weekend’s events came after Russell Vought, who heads the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, ordered wider access for DOGE, according to an email to CFPB officials that was seen by Bloomberg. Vought sent the email Friday evening, about 90 minutes before news broke that he’d also been named acting director of the financial-enforcement agency.

Vought is an architect of the Heritage Foundation’s influential and controversial government-overhaul plan called Project 2025, which appears to have guided DOGE’s attempts to dismantle portions of the federal bureaucracy. Earlier this month, the team played a key role in the administration’s effort to shut down the US Agency for International Development, another longstanding conservative bête noire.

Bloomberg News sought comment from Musk, Vought, the DOGE team members and the White House. None responded.

‘CFPB RIP’

Project 2025 calls for abolishing the CFPB, which Congress created as a consumer watchdog in the wake of the financial crisis that precipitated the Great Recession. On Saturday night, Vought sent an email instructing its employees to stop “all supervision and examination activity” and “all stakeholder engagement,” and he announced that he would decline additional funding for the bureau, saying its current account balance of $711.6 million is “excessive.” Those steps came one day after Musk posted the message “CFPB RIP” next to a tombstone emoji on his personal X account.

The CFPB is mandated to perform direct supervision on large banks and other companies it oversees. Supervision in the financial regulatory world means that examiners look under the hood at a company’s operations.

CFPB examiners have access to banks with $10 billion or more in assets, but they also oversee debt collectors, payday and other online lenders, consumer credit reporting companies, some fintechs and payments processors, and a host of other companies that banking regulators don’t monitor. The agency’s former director told a congressional panel last year that it had returned $20.7 billion to consumers since its inception.

The confidential supervisory information CFPB examiners collect is stored on agency laptops and in its internal Supervision Examination System, a Salesforce platform. That data — including customer information and complaints; new products under development but not yet released to the public; and financial information — is valuable and closely guarded, the five people said.

While there’s no evidence that DOGE staffers have begun studying any of the examination and enforcement records, employees of the financial-oversight agency questioned the appropriateness of giving the government-efficiency initiative the ability to access those records.

Just nine days before his DOGE team visited CFPB, Musk’s X — the former Twitter — announced that it had struck a deal with Visa to process peer-to-peer payments. Musk has publicly mused about expanding into payment-services since he first took control of X in 2022. Entering that business could bring CFPB oversight under rules the agency finalized in November. The records DOGE can now access would include sensitive and potentially competitive information.

DOGE staffers

DOGE’s engagement with the consumer-protection agency unfolded over several days and its scope gradually expanded.

On Friday, four DOGE staffers—Gavin Kliger, Luke Farritor, Nikhil Rajpal and Jordan Wick — were described as needing to be onboarded and provided with complete building access in an email sent to a half-dozen CFPB officials by Chris Chilbert, the agency’s chief information officer. Two additional DOGE team members, Christopher Young and Jeremy Lewin, who were provided with CFPB email addresses, were copied on the correspondence.

In the email, which was seen by Bloomberg, Chilbert asked employees to give the DOGE team the benefit of the doubt.

“I know there’s a lot going on in the press and on social right now,” Chilbert wrote. “It’s hard to separate fact from fiction. Please reach out to me anytime you have questions or concerns. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done to build a strong technology foundation and I think we have a lot of good things we can show” DOGE.

The team’s initial entry to CFPB Thursday had been accompanied by an “Assignment Agreement,” or a memorandum of understanding between the efficiency initiative and the consumer agency, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News. It explained that authority for the CFPB operation emanated from a Jan. 20 executive order. It also said that the scope of the DOGE team’s efforts would include, “work on software modernization initiatives,” the promotion of “inter-operability between agency networks and systems” and the use of software engineering to “champion the use of modern technology development and management approaches.”

The memorandum of understanding, which bore the seal of the Executive Office of the President, says CFPB leadership will see to it that the DOGE will “have full and prompt access to unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” It notes that DOGE “shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards” and that CFPB should “ascertain and mitigate any conflicts of interest or confidentiality protocols.”

Initially, CFPB officials were told that a DOGE team needed just “read only” access to their human resources, procurement and finance systems. By Friday evening, according to an email sent by Chilbert that was seen by Bloomberg News, Vought had instructed CFPB to give DOGE administrative access — a much broader form of permissioning.

The employees were forwarded an email sent to the agency by Vought. Attached to it was the signed memorandum of understanding.

“I’m sending this e-mail in my capacity as acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection,” Vought wrote in the email, which was seen by Bloomberg. “See attached letter which has been signed by me. This e-mail also constitutes my authorization to begin work under the agreement.”

A few hours later, CFPB’s X account was deleted, and the home page of the agency’s website was partially dismantled. Visitors to the website now see a “404 page not found” message when visiting the home page, although links to most pages are still accessible.

CFPB employees who read the memorandum of understanding started backchannel discussions about it and raised red flags, according to the five people familiar with the matter. They asked why DOGE would need to access the human resources, finance and procurement data if its goal was to modernize the agency’s software, the people said.

One employee sent an email to CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez and his aides, asking them to “pause and ensure that the systems that are being provided” to the DOGE team “are consistent with the law.”  The email expressed concern about potential “actions that may accidentally lead to data breaches, unintended access and other risks to the American public.”

It’s unclear whether the employee received a response. Martinez didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Chipotle Order

The DOGE team were given “senior advisor” titles at the agency and worked from a conference room in the basement of CFPB’s headquarters. The CFPB’s union attempted to greet them at the door, but the DOGE teams were standoffish and didn’t talk to anyone, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The DOGE employees largely stayed in the basement; one was spotted emerging to pick up a Chipotle order for lunch in the CFPB lobby.

By Saturday afternoon, according to five people familiar with the matter, the DOGE team’s administrative access had expanded, giving users the ability to choose which of the agency’s internal systems they can explore.

That night, Vought began to lay the groundwork for overhauling and at least temporarily shutting down the CFPB. He sent an email to all the agency’s employees under the subject line, “Directives on Bureau Activities,” which prohibited them from issuing any public communications, continuing pending investigations or launching new probes. It also ended all supervision and examinations.

On Sunday afternoon, Martinez, the chief operating officer, sent an email to CFPB staff informing them that the agency’s headquarters will be closed this week and they should work remotely. Employees who were in the office were ordered to vacate the building by the agency’s director of security.

— By Jason Leopold and Evan Weinberger (Bloomberg News)