CNN
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A top official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau testified in court Monday that efforts by DOGE to quickly and aggressively abolish the agency have been somewhat reined in by Trump-appointed agency leadership in recent weeks.
The testimony from Adam Martinez, the CFPB’s chief operating officer, was the first time that a government witness has taken the witness stand in one of the dozens of legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s sweeping overhaul of the federal government. The case, brought by a federal employee union and other organizations, has already resulted in a temporary court order that halted the terminations of hundreds of CFPB employees.
In several cases, the Trump administration is seeking to downplay the Department of Government Efficiency’s influence across the government, with court declarations describing agency heads as the ultimate decision makers behind the massing staffing cuts and work stoppages.
Martinez said that the engagement of acting CFPB head Russ Vought and Mark Paoletta, a top legal adviser, has led to a “slower” pace of decision-making that started in mid-February, after “big time” confusion that dominated the first full week that DOGE had started its work at the CFPB.
“We had adults at the table that we were able to talk to,” Martinez said.
According to Martinez’s testimony, the first DOGE employee showed up at the agency less than an hour after a February 6, 5:45 p.m. email from staff of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that instructed CFPB to let representatives from the Elon Musk-spearheaded initiative in.
A lawyer for the union on Monday suggested that that the court order – and not Vought’s or Paoletta’s influence – was what actually prevented the full-scale dismantling of CFPB, which was launched after the 2008 financial crisis and has been a target of GOP attack for years. She directed Martinez to internal emails showing a push to complete implementation of the mass firings on February 14, just before the first hearing in the case. Martinez denied any knowledge that the rush was connected to the lawsuit.
The Justice Department, in its questions for its witness, sought to paint a picture that there had been a course correction so that Trump’s CFPB overhaul would move more methodically, with questions to Martinez about instances where employees got approval by Paoletta to move forward with agency work that was required by statute.
Asked by DOJ attorney Brad Rosenberg about the status of CFPB today, Martinez said, “I don’t want to say normal, but we’re operating.”
That drew an interjection from Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who pointed to other testimony from Martinez that compared a February 3 email instructing a pause in some CFPB functions with the naming, at the time, of Bessent as agency head, to how incoming leaders of past administrations got their arms around potential shifts in priorities.
Jackson asked Martinez if the subsequent directives were normal, including directives that stopped all agency work, cancelled contracts in mass, terminated probationary employees, put most other employees on administrative leave and sought to implement a reduction in force before a Senate-confirmed agency head was in place. Martinez confirmed that those moves were not normal.
Jackson also repeatedly asked Martinez to clarify whether a directive was coming from DOGE or from Vought or Paoletta.
“I didn’t get the impression that people were on the same page,” Martinez said.
Asked by the judge who had designated DOGE affiliate Chris Young as a senior adviser at CFPB, Martinez confirmed Vought had.
The questions for Martinez from the union’s attorney Jennifer Bennett also illustrated that even when certain offices were given the ok to restart their work, they were unable to do so, particularly because of a mass cancellation of contracts that had been ordered by Paoletta and then walked back.
According to internal emails discussed during Monday’s hearing, the fallout from those cancellations, which included confusion and continued hurdles to agency work, has continued in the weeks since the initial court order, which also required that the administration take steps to preserve agency data access.
Bennett acknowledged that he had “no insight” into what was happening on the ground on the aspects of the agency not under his direct supervision.
“I know what was approved, but I don’t know the specifics,” Martinez said.
The hearing will continue Tuesday.
