Vought ducks Dems’ questions about CFPB website deletions, source says

A request from four Senate Banking Committee Democrats for information about the deletion of nearly 15 years of content from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau website has gone unanswered.

In a letter sent June 22 to acting CFPB Director Russell Vought, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Andy Kim of New Jersey and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware asked why press releases, testimony, speeches, consumer advisories, settlement notices, original research and reports disappeared from the agency’s website.

The lawmakers also asked Vought — moonlighting as the interim CFPB chief since February 2025 while simultaneously overseeing the Office of Management and Budget — what he planned to do to restore public access to the deleted content.

“These deleted pages provided crucial information that helped Americans protect themselves against unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices — and also served as a repository of corporate predatory behavior,” the Democrats wrote.

“You have erased a source of records of abusive corporate conduct that underpinned the CFPB’s decisions under prior Administrations to levy enforcement actions against those lawbreaking companies.”

The lawmakers requested answers from Vought by July 2, but a source with the Senate Banking Committee Democrats told FedScoop on Tuesday that there has been no response. 

Vought is scheduled to appear before the committee Thursday in a hearing titled “The CFPB Semi-Annual Report: A New Day at the CFPB Through Reform” — a notable shift given attempts during the early days of the second Trump administration to kill the agency.

The National Treasury Employees Union sued Vought in February 2025 over what it said were efforts “to bring the CFPB’s statutorily prescribed work to a halt,” a violation of the “separation of powers principles.” 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia eventually rejected the Trump administration’s contention that the agency could not “lawfully draw funds from the Federal Reserve.” The agency has since nominated a new director, Brian Johnson, and sparked concerns from some consumer advocacy groups about its new tack.

“The Acting Director inherited a Bureau that helped more than 200 million Americans recoup more than $21 billion from financial services companies,”  Amanda Fischer, policy director & COO of Better Markets, said in a press release Tuesday.

“In just 18-months, the current CFPB has transformed into a reverse-Robinhood campaign, instead using the Bureau to enrich financial firms and Big Tech instead of everyday Americans,” she continued. “By some accounts, the Acting Director’s change-of-course has denied families upwards of $18 billion in relief.”  

The CFPB website deletions flagged by the Democratic senators seem to align with elements of that critique. For example, the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Vought that the agency scrapped “numerous records of abusive corporate conduct from its website, after dismissing or terminating at least 42 public enforcement actions against Wall Street banks, Big Tech firms, and other corporations favored by the Trump Administration.”

“Ultimately, these deletions appear to be part of your ongoing effort to dismantle the CFPB,” the lawmakers continued. By “effectively deleting 15 years’ worth of information generated by the CFPB, you are cutting off a secure and trustworthy source of knowledge for millions of people, including consumers, private sector and government employees, and regulators.”

The CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.