New details emerge on the sprint of Trump officials for consumer office staff

Two weeks ago, a panel of three judges from the Washington Federal Court of Appeal raised freezing on the dismissal of employees of the consumer financial protection office, with certain conditions. The judges, governing on Friday evening, said that workers could be dismissed if the agency managers determined, after a meticulous evaluation, that they were not necessary to carry out the legally necessary responsibilities of the office.

In a few hours, officials of the Trump administration – in close collaboration with Elon Musk partners at the government’s Ministry of Efficiency – rushed to fire almost all employees of the agency. On Thursday afternoon, the leaders of the office sent dismissal opinions to nearly 1,500 employees, keeping barely 200 people and ordered that workers’ access to agency systems is closed the next day.

A judge has again arrested the cuts for the moment. But the details of what happened to the agency, which oversees banks and lenders and applies consumer protection laws, will be vital to determine if the layoffs can take place. Hundreds of pages of new agency files, supplemented by narrative accounts filed before the court by more than 20 employees of the agency, were submitted before a hearing this week before judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court of Washington.

Judge Jackson interrupted the dismissals provided for less than a day after the release of the opinions, saying that they went far beyond what the court of appeal had authorized. From Tuesday, she will hold a two -day hearing to take testimonies and decide to extend the opportunity to block layoffs.

The Consumer Bureau has been in effect since February, when Trump officials arrived at the agency and started to dismantle it. A series of federal court decisions prohibited the destruction of the agency. The congress created the agency in 2011 to add guarantees around mortgages and other consumer financial products, and only the congress has the power to abolish it.

Mark Paoletta, the agency’s legal director and the brain behind the dismissal plan, defended the layoffs, saying in a legal file that they “dimension on the right” an agency filled with “vast waste”. Russell Vought, director of the White House budget office, who is also the acting director of the office, described the office an agency “awake and armed”.