Two Top Officials at the US Consumer Agency Resign Amid Trump Admin Directives

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau building in Washington, on Oct. 31, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Two top officials in the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced Tuesday that they are resigning from their positions in the midst of orders issued by the Trump administration to suspend funding.

Eric Halperin, the agency’s director of enforcement, and Lorelei Salas, the head of supervision, issued emails that they would be resigning.

“As you know we have been ordered to cease all work,” Halperin wrote in his email. “I don’t believe in these conditions I can effectively serve in my role, which is protecting American consumers.”

Salas also wrote in a separate email that she could not continue to serve in her role at the agency, which was established in 2011 under the Obama administration and is responsible for consumer protection in the U.S. financial sector. The agency was originally proposed in 2007 by Elizabeth Warren, who is now a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, while she was a law professor, and was authorized under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010.

“I do not believe it is appropriate, nor lawful, to stop all supervisory activities and examinations,” she wrote.

The resignations came days after Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, who is now the acting head of the CFPB, signaled he would shut down the agency.

“I have notified the Federal Reserve that CFPB will not be taking its next draw of unappropriated funding,” Vought wrote on X earlier this week. “This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off.”

President Donald Trump has been critical of the agency. This week, he said the CFPB “was set up to destroy people,” adding that he believes that Warren used it as “her little personal agency to go around and destroy people.”

Warren, who helped create the CFPB years ago, said in a statement Monday that she opposes what the Trump administration is doing with the agency and said it’s part of a fight between “hardworking people versus the billionaires who want to squeeze more and more and more money out of them.”

She also claimed that Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency and is opposed to the CFPB, is attempting to target the agency to potentially enrich himself.

“The CFPB is there to make sure that Elon’s new project can’t scam you or steal your sensitive personal data. So Elon’s solution? Get rid of the cops. Kill the CFPB,” Warren said.

On Friday, Musk wrote, “CFPB RIP” on his X account. He also re-posted claims that the agency engaged in fraud, abuse, and criminal behavior and suggested he would shut it down. For years, Republicans have criticized the agency as being unaccountable and exceeding its legal authority,

Musk has said that he wants his X platform to enter the consumer financial marketplace.

But Rohit Chopra, the former director of the CFPB who was appointed by President Joe Biden, told NPR on Monday that the CFPB is “at its core ... a law enforcement agency” that goes after financial institutions and companies “who cheat consumers.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the CFPB for comment on the resignations.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.