[Verge] HT to Pixy Musa at AOSHQ. Fauxcahontas hardest hit
Around 20 technologists at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were fired on Thursday evening, gutting a team that specialized in understanding Big Tech’s entrance into financial products, three sources familiar with the matter tell The Verge.
It follows an earlier round of layoffs of mostly contractors and probationary employees on Tuesday, as reported by Wired, representing the latest cuts to an agency with oversight over a field that one of Elon Musk’s companies is trying to enter. Musk, who now leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has announced plans for his company X to enter the payments business, which is an area the CFPB oversees for potential consumer harm.
In a copy of a termination letter obtained by The Verge, the CFPB acting chief human capital officer Adam Martinez references President Donald Trump’s executive order instructing the Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency to help cull the federal workforce. Around 7 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, members of the technology team received the termination notices in their personal emails. One member of the team — who like others in this story spoke on background to candidly share their experiences — said the email didn’t come until about 20 minutes after they noticed they were locked out of Teams and Outlook on their work phone.
"We can’t investigate firms or supervise firms if we don’t understand the technology we’re investigating."
"The people on this team were the kind of senior people — sometimes at Big Tech firms, sometimes at premier universities — that hiring teams fight tooth and nail over," says Erie Meyer, who served as chief technologist at the CFPB during the Biden administration. Meyer resigned last Friday, surprised that as a political appointee, new top officials hadn’t asked for her resignation already. She was again surprised to learn that emails to her former colleagues announcing their termination on Thursday still copied her now-defunct work email.
Meyer, who previously worked at the Federal Trade Commission and before that co-founded the US Digital Service — the group that Trump has refashioned into DOGE — hired technologists to the CFPB that could embed across the agency and lend their expertise in everything from research to enforcement. "When I arrived at the bureau, it became immediately clear that Big Tech’s expansion into consumer financial products and services was a trend we needed to be extremely careful to address before it became a crisis," she says. "We can’t investigate firms or supervise firms if we don’t understand the technology we’re investigating."
Now that expertise has been ravaged from the agency in one night, and the agency’s former technologists fear that consumer complaints will go unanswered, and companies will be able to get away with shady practices by obscuring them with technical complexity. "Most investigations have some elements of technology, whether it’s an algorithm, a model, some sort of AI, or just data systems," says one former member of the technology team. "They will claim that it’s too burdensome, or it’s not possible to produce the data ... And having someone at the table who understands the databases, who understands the technology at hand is really crucial to being able to push back."
The CFPB technologists’ backgrounds in the private sector also helped them understand where to look for information in technical systems, says another former staffer. "When you’re a regulatory agency of 1,500 people trying to find out information about hundreds of companies, and each company is ten times your size, the amount of information that is conceivably there, and the techniques available to shroud the useful evidence are so enormous, that having the specific experience of developing the kind of technology that you’re investigating means that you can get the evidence more quickly, you can understand what it means very efficiently, " they say. "And, you can push back if a big company tries to steamroll an investigation or tries to misrepresent what is actually happening to consumers."
This is especially helpful when it comes to looking at tech firms, which have entered the financial services sector and often already have a vast array of data on users that could potentially be combined with their spending habits. "I would say a single one of these Big Tech firms is bigger than the top five big banks combined," Meyer says. The CFPB has managed to take on some of these massive companies. It fined Apple and Goldman Sachs $89 million for allegedly misleading iPhone consumers about interest-free payment options and sued Zelle and the three banks that own it for allegedly enabling more than $870 million in consumer fraud.
DOGE HAS GAINED AN UNUSUAL LEVEL OF ACCESS TO AGENCY DATA
In the course of investigating, the CFPB collects vast amounts of information on companies, which now may be at risk of being accessed by DOGE staff. A recent lawsuit by a federal workers’ union claims that Trump administration official Russell Vought demanded DOGE be given access to non-classified systems at the agency. This level of access is unusual and concerning, a source told The Verge, noting that even senior officials at the agency would typically have to provide a business justification to access data held by the agency.
What kind of information does the CFPB maintain? A document provided to congressional staffers briefed on the CFPB this week notes that the agency has information on enforcement actions and investigations, as well as market research that could include business plans. If that data is accessed without appropriate guardrails, the document warns, it could create unfair competitive advantages for a company like Musk’s X, which plans to move into payments services. The information would include sensitive consumer data, regulatory compliance information on other financial institutions, and insider information that could be used unfairly, the document notes. The White House has insisted that Musk would step back from any work that presented a conflict of interest, but his business dealings are so vast that X’s payments project presents just one example of how his interests could intertwine with the agencies DOGE is trimming down.
When the CFPB collects confidential information during an investigation, companies provide it with the understanding it won’t be shared publicly, says one of the former staffers. "Absolutely there is information that we have that would be beneficial to someone who might be launching a company in the payment space," they say.
Consumers will also likely feel the hit, now that former staffers say the portal for consumer complaints is likely not being monitored anymore. The agency would receive complaints when consumers were locked out of their bank accounts after data breaches, for example, and could often get their issues addressed within days, the former staffer says. "There is nowhere else" for consumers to go, they say. "They could potentially go to the state attorney generals, but they just don’t have the same capacity."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11139 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
She's a "fundamentally non-serious choice".
One day we will stop catering to those who check two or more of the preferences boxes, and instead insist on competent leadership. Gooder and harder, New York.
#10
watch it with the sound off and you can smell the FAFO
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2025 7:57 Comments ||
Top||
#11
^I did, and she looks terrified. No wonder she's raging!
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/15/2025 8:52 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Her downfall will be most delicious - pair nicely with that '03 Chateau Potelle I've been saving for just such an occasion.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/15/2025 9:54 Comments ||
Top||
#13
#10
Good call frank. I watched it with no sound. That is the face of real fear. Short bursty sentences. Rapid eye blinks. quivery mouth. My first thought was it looked like she was about to burst into tears. How delicious!
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/15/2025 11:37 Comments ||
Top||
#16
Someone hand me a glass of her tears. I will mix it with Jack, a little toxic masculinity, Ice and toast her loss! Too bad we cant drink from the skulls of our enemies any more...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/15/2025 11:51 Comments ||
Top||
#17
Would not work in her case. Solid bone matter.
#19
As a general, she ought to be able to recognize a rout. Even Baghdad Bob recognized it was bugout time in the end.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
02/15/2025 13:27 Comments ||
Top||
#20
The burst-transmission speech pattern, repetitive, rapid, finger scolding, and eye movement are a dead give-away of how much she is feeling pressured. My guess is a lot of the senior political management of NY State has communicated their angry reaction to the money stoppage she has caused.
[Politico via MSN, trying to retain some cred] Whoops Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against President Donald Trump, received $140,000 in pro bono legal services from a prominent Washington law firm before he resigned last month.
Covington & Burling provided the legal representation, according to a disclosure POLITICO obtained that Smith submitted Jan. 10 in connection with his departure from the Justice Department.
A spokesperson for Covington declined comment. Two of the Covington lawyers representing Smith, Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
It’s not clear precisely why Smith sought outside legal advice, but Trump repeatedly railed against Smith and his team, vowing to fire them and sometimes appearing to call for them to be criminally prosecuted.
“They ought to throw Deranged Jack Smith and his Thug Prosecutors in jail,” Trump wrote in a social media post in 2023, shortly after Smith filed a new indictment in the case charging Trump with illegally retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and conspiring to obstruct the investigation into their handling.
Earlier this month, in her first day on the job, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a directive decrying the “weaponization” of the Justice Department under the Biden administration and setting up a “working group” to investigate the phenomenon.
Although no criminal, civil or legal ethics probe of Smith’s actions has been announced by the department, she specifically instructed the working group to examine “Weaponization by Special Counsel Jack Smith and his staff who spent more than $50 million targeting President Trump, and the prosecutors and law enforcement personnel who participated in the unprecedented raid on President Trump's home.”
Covington’s representation of Smith was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In President Joe Biden’s final days in office, there was widespread speculation about whether Biden might pardon Smith and his team. Biden eventually issued preemptive pardons for members of the House Jan. 6 Committee, former National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci and former Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley.
However, no pardon for DOJ prosecutors was ever issued.
Smith has ties to several prominent lawyers at Covington, the law firm with the largest presence in D.C.
Breuer, Covington’s vice chair, served as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division from 2009 to 2013 and recruited Smith to take the pivotal post of chief of the department’s Public Integrity Section back in 2010.
Breuer has repeatedly defended Smith in interviews in recent years. “Jack is not political at all,” Breuer told the New York Times shortly after Smith was named special counsel in 2022. “He is straight down the middle.”
Covington is also home to a number of other prominent Justice Department officials, including President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder. Another Covington partner, Alan Vinegrad, was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York during part of Smith’s tenure there and assigned him to prosecute a prominent police abuse case.
The Justice Department appears to have approved Smith’s request under an Office of Government Ethics regulation issued in 2023 that allows government employees to set up legal defense funds or take such services for free if the work is related to “the employee's past or current official position” or to a position on a presidential campaign or transition team. The rule says such arrangements must be cleared by an agency ethics official and reported on an employee’s financial disclosure.
#3
Investigate who you want. Release the findings. The pardons restrict who can be charged not investigated. The court of public opinion will do nicely. As the libs say..."The process IS the punishment"
[Epoch Times] A federal judge on Feb. 14 rejected an emergency bid by eight inspectors general fired by the Trump administration to have their jobs restored.
District Judge of the District of Columbia Ana Reyes forced the attorney for the inspectors general to drop the request for a temporary restraining order during a virtual hearing, opting instead for an expedited schedule to hear their request for a preliminary injunction. The complaint will proceed at a regular pace, however.
Reyes expressed frustration that the plaintiff’s counsel, Seth Waxman, filed suit on Feb. 12 for the order requesting emergency same-day relief, which would have included backpay 21 days after the firings occurred, stating that her court’s staff was already overwhelmed with scores of other temporary restraining order requests. Giggle
Addressing the written complaint arguing the plaintiffs faced reputational damage, Reyes proposed that a 30-day return to the office with a written reason why they were unfit for their jobs could actually cause even more reputational harm than what was already given.
All the public knows is that they were fired without cause, she said. There was no harm to their reputation because no cause, say of incompetence, was given, and such a termination could be seen as preferable. Much easier to get a job in a blue state with the 'without cause' firing. Maybe the complainers will reconsider their suit.
#2
The complaint will proceed at regular pace.
The judge said, "You weren't doing anything anyway, so you can continue to not do anything."
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/15/2025 9:11 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Winning!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/15/2025 11:48 Comments ||
Top||
#4
This is like going through your partners phone messages and seeing they were blatantly cheating. They're all upset about your actions not their cheating.
🚨BREAKING: President Trump and Doug Burgum announce they are opening 625 million acres of offshore territory for drilling, reversing Biden’s last-minute ban before he left office. pic.twitter.com/Fl2kh3K0db
#3
...It's 28 cents/gal here in SC, and it was a good-sized jump when we got there - but it's got to be said that the politicians actually explained the how/why, and kept their word on keeping the money going to highway repair.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
District Judge of the District of Columbia Ana Reyes forced the attorney for the inspectors general to drop the request for a temporary restraining order during a virtual hearing, opting instead for an expedited schedule to hear their request for a preliminary injunction.
