Why the financial protection office of Trump, Doge, is targeted

In the weeks since President Trump’s return to the office, the Consumer financial protection officeLong a goal of conservatives, landed in the crosshairs of Elon Musks Doge or in the Department of Government Efficiency.

As a Watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has commissioned to protect consumers from finance fraud and dodgy lending practices. Musk criticized the agency, which would monitor one of his new undertakings. Now it is Head was fired And workers were said that they should stay at home. The doors were closed and all the work was stopped.

Rohit Chopra, the dismissed leader, who previously worked under Mr. Trump during his first term at the Federal Trade Commission, said that he had the goal of the CFPB as “suspicious”. It is a small agency that monitors some of the largest and most powerful companies out there, including large banks and technology companies that move into financial technology.

“You want a situation in which the agency is more of a lapdog than a watchdog,” said Chopra.

A conflict of interest for musk?

Mr. Trump in the Oval Office at the beginning of this month said that his goal was to completely eliminate the CFPB, “because we try to get rid of waste fraud and abuse.” Waste of removing fraud and abuse is a task that the President presented to musk and Doge.

However, the elimination of an agency that regulates technical companies creates a potential for conflicts of interest for Musk, especially in view of the confidentiality in terms of Doge – something that refutes muscle.

“I know no case in which an organization was more transparent than the Doge organization.” Said Musk In the Oval Office on February 11th.

He said it would be obvious if he did something that would benefit you. However, it is not obvious or transparent for many. A team of young men who were connected to Doge received a broad access to the computers of the office, but the American public does not know what they are looking for or what they are doing with access to these files.

Hanna Hickman, who was a lawyer for office less than two weeks ago, said she heard that Doge’s workers were stored in the CFPB cellar.

“You have papers on the windows to keep people from looking at. And you have certainly accessed data,” she said.

What is on the computers that are accessed by Doge?

In recent years, the office has started to monitor digital bank companies and products aggressively. So there is a lot of information about his computers about you, which is potentially relevant for Musk because he announced that he starts a new digital payment platform X Money.

“He may be able to get access to files from his competitors such as Venmo and Cash app. He can remove the regulatory authority that his company’s watchdog would have been,” said Hickman. “I think it’s easier to release us than to hit us in court.”

A high -ranking official of the White House announced 60 minutes that Musk is not in the interior of the Doge operations at CFPB. The team that works there decreases their orders from the deputy director of the office. The official refused to comment on what the team of young men in particular did in the office.

After several sources, however, the team was granted unprecedented access to the CFPB data systems, including sensitive bank files – access, which normally requires training and background exams.

Hickman said every CFPB employee had to carry out an extensive background check.

“It contains a detailed run of our background, fingerprints that speak to neighbors and friends to make sure we say that we are,” she said. “It is a process that takes at least a few months to be committed.”

The Chief Operating Officer of the CFPB gave a jury that the members of the Doge team “granted privacy and cyber security training” and had not signed any confidentiality agreements.

In response to this, the main technologist of the CFPB, who had just resigned, wrote that the training alone was not sufficient, and found that there was no mention of Doge employees.

Lorelei Salas and Eric Halperin, the best -ranking cfpb officials to leave the office, said they were horrified by the idea that people who browely browse through the confidential files. After they had been put on the administrative vacation, both stepped back.

“I’m worried about your account number, your social security number is out there,” said Salas.

Halperin, who was responsible for all the complaints of the office in the name of the cheated consumers, said that companies want the information that CFPB must remain private.

“We have information – both proprietary business information as well as trade intelligence and personal identifiable information for consumers that we collected in the course of our work that was necessary for our work,” said Halperin.

Salas led a team of almost 600 inspectors who examined the books of banks and other financial institutions. She pointed out the development of artificial intelligence tools used by companies to make decisions about whether someone gives someone a loan or not. These algorithms are in the CFPB system, said Salas.

“I think that companies that gave us their financial information and even their business secrets are probably violated if this information fell into the hands of competitors,” said Salas.

What happens at CFPB now?

Three hours after the Doge team was wrapped on February 7th, Musk posted on X. Mr. Trump next to a picture of a tombstone “CFPB RIP” RussivA passionate critic of the office, as a deputy director. VOUGHT AN X announced that he would hire the agency’s financing.

“This cone that contributes to CFPBS Uncountability for a long time is now being switched off,” said Vought.

The shots soon started. Hickman and almost 200 of her colleagues found it with a mass -e email.

“We practically closed the out of control CFPB, led radical left bureaucrats out of the building and lock the doors behind,” said Trump last week. “What they did was so terrible. Where they spent the money was so terrible.”

At the end of last week, the workers decreased at the CFPB headquarters, although a federal judge imposed a temporary injunction in order to stop the budget cuts in the office and other burnings. A hearing is set for March 3.

The judge’s arrangement does not cover the already dismissed, like Hickman, who says that she has not received a severance payment.

“According to the normal regulations for the dismissal of government, we should receive at least 60 days of termination, severance pay and advantages that help us deal in a new role,” said Hickman. “It’s shocking.”

Hickman said she Union fights back.

“We are looking for all legal options to pursue this,” said Hickman. “Ultimately, the administration believes that they can get through because they do not believe that we have a recourse. So I hope that they will prove the opposite.”

Should the CFPB exist?

The watch dog agency created by the Congress after the 2008 financial crisis was the idea of ​​Senator Elizabeth Warren, who now leads the upward fight to keep the office alive.

“For everyone who wants to buy a house without being cheated, this fight is her fight, ”she said in a recent protest.

Norbert Michel from the Libertary Cato Institute agrees with the President that there are too many financial supervisory authorities. He said there are enough regulatory authorities and do not believe that CFPB should ever be created.

“There was consumer protection long before we had a CFPB,” said Michel. “And if we get rid of it and put everything again in the way, we still have consumer protection.”

Functions assigned to the office could be assigned as part of the Federal Trade Commission, he said.

“Your motto is literally on the website” Protection of America’s consumers “,” said Michel.

Nevertheless, the office has reclaimed over 20 billion US dollars for consumers in its short existence.

From now on, CFPB investigations and almost all the lawsuits introduced by the agency are frozen. And Chopra says that no reimbursement controls are from cheated consumers. He doesn’t even know if the office really exists at the moment.

“I only know that many employees are told that they are silent and stay at home,” said Chopra.

He also doesn’t know where the congress is located in the entire chaos around the agency. He argues that only the congress has the legal authority to close an agency she created.

“You can’t just say: ‘We will say goodbye to consumers’ and then behave as if the agency was a dead fish,” he said. “This is not how the constitution does not work.”