Feb. 11 (UPI) — Two top officials in the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resigned Tuesday as the Trump administration ordered e, employees at the bureau to cease work.
Eric Halperin, the CFPB’s assistant director for the office of enforcement, separately emailed staff along with Assistant Director for Supervision Policy Lorelei Salas to notify them of their resignations, according to CNBC, Politico and Bloomberg Law.
“As you know, we have been ordered to cease all work. I don’t believe in these conditions I can effectively serve in my role, which is protecting American consumers,” Halperin wrote in part. “Today I made the difficult decision to resign,” he added.
Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought on Monday ordered the agency to halt its operations after roughly 1,700 federal workers received an email Sunday that its head office in Washington will be closed through Friday.
Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, was appointed by President Donald Trump on Feb. 7 to lead the bureau on an acting basis.
Vought emailed CFPB staff instructing them to “cease all supervision and examination,” including of financial firms, and stop all engagement with stakeholders.
“The Bureau has been instructed to stand down,” Salas wrote Tuesday. “I do not believe it is appropriate, nor lawful, to stop all supervisory activities and examinations, and I cannot longer (sic) serve as the Supervision Director.”
The CFPB polices financial firms, and has claimed since its 2011 creation in the wake of the financial crisis, to of returned more than $20 billion to U.S. consumers.
Salas previously served more than four years as commissioner of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
“I know you are concerned about your futures, the future of the bureau, and more importantly, the impact these sweeping changes will have on everyday consumers,” she added
“The ways in which you protect the American consumer cannot be captured in just a few sentences, and too many are unaware of the work you do behind the scenes.”
Halperin, a former Justice Department fair lending official prior to joining the CFPB, was executive director of the Washington-based legal defense nonprofit group Civil Rights Corps.
“As I’ve said to you in the past, the road to justice for consumers is long, progress is not always linear, and success requires many hands,” he said. “Your work has made an incredible difference in people’s lives.”
The agency’s shuttering came after staffers of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency visited the CFPB’s office Friday.
Musk, the world’s richest man with billions in government contracts, is seeking to transition his social media platform X into a payment processing platform in a partnership with Visa which would be under a CFPB microscope.
He later wrote “CPFB RIP” in a post on X accompanied by a gravestone emoji.
