By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 21, 2025 ~

Donald Trump loyalists, including Elon Musk and his “Muskrats,” (coders and techies that are loyal to Musk) have launched an unconstitutional reign of terror through federal agencies that are critical to the safety and security of Americans. Musk is the world’s wealthiest man, and foreign born, with a dubious history when it comes to following U.S. laws.

Musk previously battled in court to obtain a $56 billion pay package at Tesla. (That’s billion not million.) Tesla is a publicly-traded company and Musk is its CEO – meaning that under law he owes an oath of loyalty to the company and its shareholders. Notwithstanding that law, Musk simultaneously serves as CEO of rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, and controls numerous other companies, including the social media platform, Twitter, which Musk has renamed “X.”

In January and February of last year, Musk was profiled in two bombshell Wall Street Journal articles regarding his use of illegal drugs. The Wall Street Journal’s January 6, 2024 (paywall) article carried this assessment of Musk’s drug use:

“The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter, according to people who have witnessed his drug use and others with knowledge of it. Musk has previously smoked marijuana in public and has said he has a prescription for the psychedelic-like ketamine.”

In October, five Wall Street Journal reporters dropped more bombshell news that Musk “has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.” In February of 2022, the U.S. placed Putin on a sanction list in response to his “unjustified, unprovoked, and premeditated invasion of Ukraine….”

Trump, who received $288 million in political campaign support from Musk in the last campaign cycle, has now announced that it was Ukraine that started the war with Russia, making the U.S. look like a fool on the world stage and among its allies in Europe.

Musk has also been the target of multiple cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission which allege that he violated federal securities laws at Tesla and Twitter (now called X). See here and here.

Notwithstanding this five-alarm fire history, President Donald Trump has put Musk and his organizational concoction called the Department of Government Efficiency, (DOGE, after the meme crypto coin of the same name) in charge of rooting out fraud, waste and abuse in federal agencies.

In the case of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Musk and his pals in the Trump administration tried to kill the whole agency. On February 7, Musk Tweeted: “CFPB RIP” (rest in peace) with a picture of a tombstone. That followed a November 27, 2024 Tweet from Musk where he wrote “Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.”

It is patently untrue that the CFPB is “duplicative.” The agency was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to fill the void that allowed millions of Americans to have their homes illegally foreclosed and be swindled under tricked-up subprime mortgages that left the U.S. economy in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Since its creation, the CFPB has returned more than $21 billion to defrauded seniors, students, military veterans and other vulnerable Americans.

On February 1, President Trump fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, who had led the agency for almost three and a half years. Trump then appointed his newly-installed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to serve as Acting Director of the CFPB. (See Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.)

About a week later, Trump changed his mind about Bessent leading the CFPB (or Bessent decided he wanted no part of the legally dubious act of gutting a federal agency created by Congress). So Trump decided to install the mastermind of Project 2025, Russell Vought, as Acting Director of the CFPB. (Vought was already serving as Trump’s newly installed Director of the Office of Management and Budget.)

NBC News got its hands on an email that Vought immediately issued to employees of the CFPB. NBC News reported as follows:

“Employees were instructed to ‘cease all supervision and examination activity,’ ‘cease all stakeholder engagement,’ pause all pending investigations, not issue any public communications and pause ‘enforcement actions.’

“Vought also told employees not to ‘approve or issue any proposed or final rules or formal or informal guidance’ and to ‘suspend the effective dates of all final rules that have been issued or published but that have not yet become effective,’ among other directives.”

A 404 Error message appears on the front page of the CFPB website and its social media pages have been deleted (as Musk envisioned back in November) at X (Twitter), and Facebook.

Multiple federal lawsuits were quickly filed against this unprecedented and outrageous attack on a federal agency. Notable among them was a lawsuit brought in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). The lawsuit names Vought as the defendant, in his official capacity as Acting Director of the CFPB, and charges that his actions violate the separation of powers principles embedded in the U.S. Constitution that assign specific powers to the legislative branch (Congress) and specific powers to the Executive Branch (the President).

On February 14, the Judge assigned to the case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, issued the following order that included this directive, among others:

“…it is hereby ORDERED that until the resolution of plaintiffs’ motion for temporary restraining order [Dkt. # 10], which, with the parties’ consent, will be deemed to be a motion for preliminary injunction, the following orders shall remain in place:

“It is ORDERED that Defendants, including their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, (hereafter collectively, ‘Defendants’) shall not delete, destroy, remove, or impair any data or other CFPB records covered by the Federal Records Act (hereinafter ‘agency data’) except in accordance with the procedures described in 33 U.S.C. § 44. This means that defendants shall not delete or remove agency data from any database or information system controlled by, or stored on behalf of, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the term ‘agency data’ includes any data or CFPB records stored on the CFPB’s premises, on physical media, on a cloud server, or otherwise.”

Notwithstanding that federal court order, Wall Street On Parade located the YouTube page below showing that the entire video playlist for the CFPB has been deleted. According to the Wayback Machine, that playlist previously consisted of 361 videos. (See screenshot from the Wayback Machine in second graphic below.)

Dozens of videos have also been disabled on the official website of the CFPB. See examples below:

Racial equality in higher education;

How to spot, avoid and report student loan debt relief scams;

Financial Education Resources for Veterans.

In an acknowledgement of just how dangerous this attack on a consumer protection agency is, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, will convene a forum in the Senate Dirksen Office Building next Tuesday, February 25. A livestream of the event will be available to the public. (Check back here on Monday for more specific details.) The forum will focus on the consequences of President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s efforts to eliminate the CFPB.

Senator Warren has invited Elon Musk to appear at the forum and justify his actions. Confirmed witnesses include: Andrea Campbell, Attorney General of Massachusetts; Lorelei Salas, former CFPB Director of Supervision Policy; and Americans whose savings have been protected by the CFPB.