A new trove of emails unearthed in federal court reveals chaos unleashed by the Trump administration’s abrupt shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Obama-era agency meant to shield Americans from unfair banking practices.
Hundreds of pages of communications show career officials grasping for clarity in the weeks after the CFPB’s acting director, Russ Vought, ordered Feb. 10 a total stoppage of all “work tasks.” That order in many ways conflicted with officials’ legally required responsibilities.
Then, the emails reveal, as a lawsuit against the shutdown progressed, the agency’s Trump-appointed leaders scrambled to restart those required programs. And the leaders suggested that Vought’s Feb. 10 email — despite its unambiguous language — was never intended to halt all of the agency’s work.
“It has come to my attention … that some employees have not been performing statutorily required work,” Vought’s top legal aide, Mark Paoletta, wrote March 2. “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.”
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