Washington, DC — On Thursday evening, three Department of Government Efficiency staffers—Chris Young, Nikhil Rajpal and Gavin Kliger—appeared in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s internal staff directory, according to the National Treasury Employees Union. Billionaire Elon Musk’s social media company X recently announced a partnership with Visa to offer payments on the platform and, notably, the CFPB recently obtained the authority to supervise major payment apps. Musk has also previously tweeted his desire to “delete CFPB.” Demand Progress Education Fund has long been a champion of the CFPB’s work to protect Americans from financial predators and scammers.
The following is a statement from Demand Progress Education Fund Corporate Power Director Emily Peterson-Cassin:
“The world’s richest man just dispatched his minions to root around the systems of a government watchdog responsible for policing payment schemes like the one just announced for his own company. It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it’s real and the American people are the real victims.
Musk’s dreams of an ‘everything app’ that reaches into people’s bank accounts paired with his sweeping, unchecked access to the levers of government opens up the potential for breathtaking corruption. His intrusion into CFPB systems also sends a clear message that he has no interest whatsoever in policing his own conflicts of interest. Musk must be stopped from dismantling the very mechanisms of the federal government that can prevent him from looting the American people.”