• Key insight: The CFPB's leadership cited ongoing litigation as the reason for not cooperating with the Government Accountability Office.  
• Supporting data: The GAO reiterated what was found in court documents, finding that the CFPB had planned to fire 88% of the staff.  
• Forward look: A federal appeals court will hear oral arguments in late February on whether the CFPB can be dismantled by the agency's director through mass firings. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau refused to cooperate with the Government Accountability Office's efforts to review staff reductions by the Trump administration.On Monday, the GAO released a 31-page report requested last year by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and other Democratic lawmakers, who asked the GAO for oversight of the CFPB's staff cuts and stop-work orders. The GAO undertakes investigations into federal agencies on behalf of Congress. 

The CFPB refused to meet with GAO officials or answer questions despite being asked to provide feedback at least five times from May through September, the agency said. Mark Paoletta, the CFPB's chief legal officer, told the GAO that its report was "full of biased and incomplete information," even though Paoletta refused to cite or correct any information. 

On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, released a minority report that found the CFPB has cost American consumers up to $19 billion. 

"Trump's attempt to sideline the CFPB has cost families billions of dollars over the last year alone," Warren said in a press release. "We're going to keep fighting for the CFPB and against the billionaires who want to get rid of it."

Paoletta, in his letter, said the GAO investigation was requested by "hyper-partisan Democrats." He also claimed the GAO, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, relied on court filings by the National Treasury Employees Union — which is suing to stop what it describes as illegal firings by the administration — and that he referred to as "hostile litigants." He said the CFPB is constrained by that ongoing lawsuit from providing information and data that would "correct GAO's misleading assertions in the report." 

"As CFPB indicated to GAO on multiple occasions, the Bureau is engaged in litigation over essentially all aspects of the report," Paoletta wrote in September to Alicia Puente Cackley, the GAO's director of financial markets and community investment.

"Nonetheless, GAO advanced this report relying on incomplete information, including court filings containing inaccurate assertions advanced by hostile litigants. This approach is inconsistent with an effort to produce sound information, and instead represents an attempt to issue false and misleading information regarding the Bureau on behalf of partisan Democrats in Congress," he said. 

The GAO provided very little analysis of what has happened in the past year. Instead the report is full of various timelines and previously known facts. Consumer advocates are planning protests to mark the one-year anniversary of the CFPB being taken over and dismantled by the administration. 

Several former CFPB officials said the GAO report furthers the argument that the administration's staff-cutting effort was really an effort to dismantle the agency entirely, in defiance of explicit congressional authorization. 

The NTEU filed a lawsuit last February against acting CFPB Director Russell Vought that halted mass layoffs. After a year of litigation, an appeals court is scheduled to rehear the union's arguments on Feb. 24, 2026.

The GAO responded by saying the "CFPB declined to meet with us and did not provide requested information, citing ongoing litigation."  

The report describes the CFPB's downsizing efforts. A future report will examine the effects of the agency's actions. The GAO said the CFPB attempted to fire 88% of its staff but was stopped from doing so by the union's lawsuit. The bureau has rescinded more than 70 actions and dropped half of its enforcement actions. 

The GAO provided several timelines of significant events that began a year ago with a stop-work order, the closure of the agency's headquarters, contract terminations and workforce redactions. There also is a timeline of the actions by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was headed by Elon Musk in the first months of the Trump administration and which had a detail of employees at the CFPB participating in RIF efforts. 

The GAO included timelines of CFPB website outages last year and its funding, with Vought capitulating last month to a court order by finally asking for the agency's funding from the Federal Reserve System

Among the deregulatory efforts, the CFPB has rescinded seven interpretive rules, eight policy statements, 13 advisory opinions and 39 other guidance documents, according to the GAO. It also withdrew three proposed rules and rescinded one final procedural rule. It also proposed rescinding a number of rules amended during the Biden administration. 

When President Trump took office for the second time in January 2025, the CFPB had 34 enforcement actions and four civil investigative demands in place. Of those, nine enforcement actions and one CID are still being litigated, while 20 enforcement actions and three CIDS were dismissed. The remaining enforcement actions resulted either in judgments against the companies or a withdrawal or settlement by the CFPB. 

Paoletta claimed in his letter to the GAO that the CFPB had hurt rather than helped consumers.

"Many of the CFPB actions in the past actually harmed consumers by taking away options in the marketplace that could address their needs," he wrote. 

He also claimed Congress "agrees with acting Director Vought's efforts to right-size this bloated agency, as evidenced by its decision to cut the Bureau's funding nearly in half in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act."

"In the meantime, CFPB's new leadership team is uncovering and implementing measures to address the agency's profligate spending," Vought said.

Last month, Vought, who also is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, reversed his position on funding the CFPB by requesting $145 million from the Federal Reserve to fund the agency through March. The move came after a court found that his refusal to request funds was a violation of a preliminary injunction designed to keep the agency operational. 

Last year, a district court said that Vought's arguments for a reduction in force was an "unsupported and transparent attempt to achieve the very end the court's injunction was put in place to prevent."