Four young staffers working under Elon Musk gained access to highly sensitive personal data held by a consumer protection agency before shutting it down.
White House budget director Russell Vought ordered wider access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau materials by staffers working for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency over the weekend before agency chief operating officer Adam Martinez ordered all its employees to stay home for the week, reported Bloomberg News.
"The actions began last Thursday, when four young staffers working under Musk for [DOGE] showed up at CFPB’s Washington headquarters," the publication reported. "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 report added. "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."
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Vought was a key architect for the Project 2025 blueprint for right-wing governance, which called to abolishing the consumer watchdog that was established after the 2008 financial crisis, and Musk has predicted its demise since taking steps to enter the payments industry through his X platform.
"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," Bloomberg reported. "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."
CFPB chief information officer Chris Chilbert sent an email Friday to a half-dozen agency officials saying the four DOGE staffers – Gavin Kliger, Luke Farritor, Nikhil Rajpal and Jordan Wick – should be provided with complete building access, and two additional DOGE team members, Christopher Young and Jeremy Lewin, were provided with agency email addresses and copied on the correspondence.
“I know there's a lot going on in the press and on social right now,” Chilbert wrote in the email. “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.
A memorandum of understanding, which bore the seal of the Executive Office of the President, said DOGE was given authority over CFPB by a Jan. 20 executive order, and the document seen by Bloomberg News notified officials that the Musk allies should be given "full and prompt access to unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems" and insisted they would "adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
CFPB employees raised concerns about the memorandum of understanding and questioned why DOGE staffers should have access the human resources, finance and procurement data if their mission was to modernize the agency's software, according to five sources familiar with the matter.
The Musk staffers were given “senior advisor” titles at the agency and worked out of a conference room in the basement of CFPB headquarters, where they rebuffed union members' attempts to greet them at the door, and by Saturday afternoon they were permitted to explore any internal systems they wished, and Vought started shutting down the agency that night.
"[Vought] 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," Bloomberg reported. "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," the report added. "Employees who were in the office were ordered to vacate the building by the agency’s director of security."
