Russell Vought takes the helm at CFPB as Musk’s DOGE accesses key systems

Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025 and the new director at the Office of Management and Budget, is now also the acting leader of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, according to a source familiar with the situation. The source requested anonymity out of fear of retribution.

Senior executives at CFPB, the federal consumer finance watchdog, were informed Friday night that Vought was taking the helm as acting director of the bureau. He replaces Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was named acting director of the bureau on Monday.

The move is the latest turn in a tumultuous week at the CFPB, where staff have been instructed to halt much of their work. The agency was instrumental in the Biden administration’s work to address deceptive or predatory business practices. The CFPB filed lawsuits against big banks and payment platforms, and made rules including capping overdraft fees and removing medical bills from credit reports.

As NPR reported Friday, members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team — which is not a true government department, but rather a group of staff tasked with ensuring President Trump’s priorities are enacted across the government — has gained access to internal computer systems that manage the agency’s human resources, procurement and finance systems.

Musk’s representatives have also taken control of CFPB’s website, which now shows an error message on its homepage. The rest of the site appears to be functioning normally. DOGE staffers also took control of the bureau’s social media accounts and deleted them.

Musk posted on his personal X account on Friday: “CFPB RIP,” though it is not clear there have been any reductions or changes to the agency’s staff yet. In November, Musk posted, “Delete CFPB.”

DOGE’s actions inside the bureau are stoking fears that Musk will try to virtually dismantle the agency to the extent possible, as he aims to do at the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The gutting of USAID was temporarily paused by a federal judge on Friday.

The union representing CFPB workers, NTEU 335, said Friday that Musk’s lieutenants entering the agency was “a clear attempt to attack union workers and defang the only agency that checks the greed of payment providers, as well as auto lenders like Tesla.” Musk — who Trump said Monday would be kept from working on areas where “there is a conflict or problem” — is CEO of Tesla and runs at least five other companies, some of which have lucrative contracts with the federal government.

The union also noted that the bureau collects and maintains vast amounts of sensitive information about individuals and businesses, including banks and other financial institutions. It expressed concern that “such legally-protected, sensitive data of businesses and individuals will be exposed and used in inappropriate ways.”

“For example, the CFPB has gathered a wealth of proprietary information from big tech payment platforms that could be exploited by someone with a conflict of interest to corner the payments industry,” the union said, pointing to a newly announced partnership between Musk’s X and Visa.

The CFPB has long been a target of criticism among Republicans, the banking sector, and some in Silicon Valley for its investigations, enforcement actions and fines in consumer protection cases.

The organization is an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve System. It is funded outside of the congressional appropriations process, and its funding comes from the Fed.

The bureau would on its face appear to be an unlikely target for cost-cutting, given its return on investment.

The budget for 2025 for CFPB is $823 million. Since its creation in 2011, the CFPB has returned $20.7 billion to consumers.