DOGE aide dismantling CFPB owns stock in companies that could benefit from cuts
At the end of March, a district court judge issued a sweeping stay on the administration’s actions. Then on April 11, an appeals court in Washington, D.C., partially lifted that stay. In its order, the panel wrote that bureau leaders must conduct a “particularized assessment” before firing workers.
Days later, most of the agency’s staff was notified that they were being fired.
The bureau’s chief legal officer, Mark Paoletta, and two other lawyers conducted the court-ordered review, the government said in legal papers. In a recent filing, Paoletta wrote that the administration is attempting to achieve a “streamlined and right-sized Bureau.” Instead of 248 enforcement division employees and 487 in the supervision division, he wrote, he planned to keep 50 workers in each.
But on Monday evening, amid vigorous dispute over the legality of the firings and the definition of “particularized assessment,” the appeals court backtracked, upholding the trial court’s initial stay on the mass layoffs as the case plays out. The CFPB then notified the more than 1,400 employees who’d been laid off that their firings were being rescinded. The lawsuit is ongoing, with oral arguments before the appeals court scheduled for next month.
Kliger didn’t respond to voicemails or emails seeking comment for this story. The CFPB didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, the White House said that “these allegations are another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission.”
Kliger “did not even manage” the layoffs, the statement said, “making this entire narrative an outright lie.”
Asked to clarify Kliger’s role in the administration’s cuts, a spokesperson said, “You have 90 days from the start date to divest which is May 8th — it is only April 28th.” It’s unclear what rule the White House was referencing; the spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions. But ethics experts said there are two scenarios that could apply: Sometimes, high-level government officials pledge to divest their holdings by a certain date to avoid conflicts of interest. And at the CFPB in particular, regulations give employees 90 days to divest prohibited holdings.
In either case, though, the employee is required to recuse themselves from any actions that could affect their investments.
Delaney Marsco, a government ethics expert at the Campaign Legal Center, said Kliger’s holdings and his involvement in winding down the agency erode the public’s faith that government officials are serving its best interests.
“When you have these facts, it raises the question, which is just as bad as when you have the actual violation because it makes the public question,” she said.
Kliger owns between $15,000 and $50,000 of stock in Apple, which the CFPB regulates. The company agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty last October following a bureau investigation into Apple Card, a credit card in the company’s software. The bureau said that Apple did not have a proper transaction dispute system when it launched and also that it misled some customers about its financing. The company agreed to the consent order, records show, “without admitting or denying any of the findings of fact or conclusions of law.” In a statement at the time, Apple said that “while we strongly disagree with the CFPB’s characterization of Apple’s conduct, we have aligned with them on an agreement.”
Kliger also owns between $100,000 and $250,000 of Tesla stock. The company, founded by DOGE boss Elon Musk, falls under the bureau’s purview because it offers financing, a key area of scrutiny for the CFPB.
Kliger also owns cryptocurrencies: between $1,000 and $15,000 of Solana and between $15,000 and $50,000 of Bitcoin.
Any federal worker who “holds any amount of a cryptocurrency or stablecoin may not participate in a particular matter if the employee knows that particular matter could have a direct and predictable effect on the value of their cryptocurrency or stablecoins,” according to a legal memo issued in July of 2022, under then-President Joe Biden, by the independent federal agency tasked with advising executive branch employees on how to avoid conflicts of interests.
An internal notice to CFPB employees the following month instructed anyone with such a holding to “immediately recuse yourself from working on any Bureau particular matter,” report the ownership and divest within 90 days, records reviewed by ProPublica show.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second presidency, the administration has sought to significantly reduce the size, scope and nature of America’s consumer watchdog, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
ProPublica reported last month that dozens of investigations the agency had launched were stalled amid stop-work orders.
In a recent court filing that supplements a newly released policy memo, Paoletta wrote that, in recent years, “the Bureau has also engaged in intrusive and wasteful fishing expeditions against depository institutions and, increasingly, non-depository institutions” and that it had “pushed into new areas beyond its jurisdiction such as peer-to-peer lending, rent-to-own, and discrimination as unfair practice.”
