Consumer protection workers endure chaos and confusion amid efforts to dismantle their agency

By Shania Shelton, CNN

(CNN) — Chaos within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has come to light in a recent court filing showing emails and documents from employees inside the agency amid efforts to dismantle it, illustrating a team scrambling to make do with recent firings and confusion on what work is allowed to be completed.

Employees were left puzzled following instructions from Russell Vought, the acting director of CFPB, last month explicitly ordering them to stop working altogether and saying that “any urgent matters” would require approval in writing from the bureau’s chief legal officer.

Those instructions kickstarted a flurry of uncertainty and hesitancy behind the scenes that has picked up this week. Mark Paoletta, CFPB chief legal officer, said in an email on Sunday that it had come to his attention that some employees had not been performing statutorily required work.

“Let me be clear: Employees should be performing work that is required by law and do not need to seek prior approval to do so,” Paoletta wrote, according to the court filing.

CFPB’s mission is to protect consumers from financial abuses and to serve as the central independent agency for consumer financial protection authorities. President Donald Trump fired the previous director of the CFPB, Rohit Chopra, last month before the agency’s work had been halted. The effort to gut the agency was made apparent with an Elon Musk tweet last month that read: “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji.

An ensuing court battle has produced the filing with revealing internal emails showing how the agency isn’t meeting its obligations. A federal judge has put in place an order that blocks the agency from making any substantial changes, especially to its data, personnel and funding reserves, but even that is a challenge to comply with, the agency emails reveal.

In further emails, Cassandra Huggins, CFPB’s principal deputy assistant director of supervision policy and operations, addressed there being “quite a bit of confusion surrounding the message,” while offering her own take on Paoletta’s Sunday email.

“We have requested and received clarification that their message was not intended to authorize the reinstatement of supervision/examination activity, even though the Bureau is required by law to carry out these activities,” Huggins sent in an email.

Huggins wrote that it was communicated to her that “supervision staff should continue to operate on administrative leave as directed by the Acting Director unless you have received express permission to work on a task.”

Her email contradicted Paoletta’s email request for employees to complete work required by law, leading to more confusion from staff.

In one instance, John Schroeder, regional director of the Midwest region, apologized for the mixed messaging. “I apologize for the continued confusion being caused by multiple misleading and inconsistent email,” he wrote in an email to staff on Monday.

Since Vought took over as acting director last month, several changes have taken place at the agency, including Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency being granted administrative access to CFPB systems, the agency terminating contracts with multiple expert witnesses it had hired in cases against companies accused of hurting consumers and DOGE deleting the watchdog’s X account.

CNN has reached out to CFPB and DOGE for comment.

A flurry of challenges

The recent filing showcases the problems CFPB employees have endured as the Trump administration has attempted to wind the agency down, including the inability to do certain basic tasks because of the number of employees that have been fired.

Jason Brown, an assistant research director, highlighted in a Monday email “a few challenges” they were facing while resuming their work, including a loss of personnel from firings that “impacts our ability to complete assignments as planned” and a loss of research tools, such as their qualitative researcher contract and lab contracts.

Brown also highlighted a loss of data, as several of their contracts were cancelled and questions surrounded the location of some data, as well as a loss of IT resources.

“Several contracts that have supported our work have been cancelled. We have seen some impairment in our ability to do our work, and in some cases we can’t tell if the struggles we’re facing are because of cancelled contracts or glitches, and the people who would ordinarily help us out have themselves been terminated,” he wrote in the email.

One employee requested to fix the CFPB homepage, which had been showing a “404: Page not found” error. The CFPB employee claimed the error message had been showing since February 7.

“I believe this negatively impacts our statutorily mandated reporting requirements (eg for research) and subverts the statutorily mandated initiatives developed for consumer education and engagement,” the employee wrote.

Chief Information Officer Christopher Chilbert acknowledged the issue wasn’t authorized to be restored at the time, saying in an email response, “I believe it is important to restore the homepage as soon as possible, but that is not currently authorized.”

In another instance, Chilbert claimed the agency would “lose all historical data on our Google Analytics platform if we don’t pay the bill.” This was typically done with a government card, but new restrictions had been placed on using it.

Asked what needed to be done to pay the bill, Chief Financial Officer Jafnar Gueye said using the card would require an approved exception and sent a list of questions to justify the purchase.

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

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