Report: CFPB Acting Director Tells Employees to Stop Working

The new acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Russell Vought, reportedly told the agency’s employees Monday (Feb. 10) to stay out of the office and not perform any work tasks.

Vought, who was appointed acting director of the CFPB Friday (Feb. 7) and is also head of the Office of Management and Budget, delivered this message in an email to employees and idled about 2,000 CFPB workers, Reuters reported Monday.

“Please do not perform any work tasks,” Vought told employees in the email, per the report.

The CFPB did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

In a Monday post on X, the White House’s official “rapid response” account, Rapid Response 47, said: “The ‘Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’ (the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren) has long functioned as another woke, weaponized arm of the bureaucracy that leverages its power against certain industries and individuals disfavored by so-called ‘elites.’”

The account said in subsequent replies that the CFPB used funds to support “radical advocacy groups,” was accused of mining Americans’ personal financial information and granted itself broad new powers in the last days of the Biden administration.

Warren, who is a Democratic Senator representing Massachusetts and is the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a Monday post on X that the CFPB was created by Congress and cannot be shut down illegally.

She added that the CFPB’s supporters will resist the move in Congress, in the courts and in public.

“President Trump campaigned on lowering costs,” Warren said in another post on X. “But he’s letting billionaire Elon Musk and Project 2025 Architect Russ Vought kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If they succeed, CEOs on Wall Street will once again be free to cheat you out of your savings.”

It was reported Sunday that workers at the CFPB would work from home, with the agency’s headquarters closed down, through Friday (Feb. 14), the same day a judge is scheduled to hold a hearing involving Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s access to Treasury Department data.

A day earlier, Vought more or less shut down the CFPB’s operations by telling workers to halt “all supervision and examination activity” and “all stakeholder engagement.”