Suspended worker characterizes probe as a ‘fishing expedition’
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has placed Stephen Wheeler on administrative leave effective immediately earlier this month, according to the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 335, which represents bureau employees. Wheeler has been a data scientist at the agency since 2022 and chairs the union’s organizing committee. The union said it was not provided with any specific violations or given details of the investigation.
“An investigation with no stated scope or scale is no investigation – it’s a fishing expedition,” Wheeler said. “I have nothing to hide, and when the facts are examined this will be seen for what it is: bullying and intimidation for union activity and protected speech.”
The union noted that Wheeler had been a vocal presence at union pickets, had sat behind Russell Vought during his Congressional testimony in July, and had recently spoken with NPR about the forced relocation of staff at the agency. Workers have viewed the relocation and return-to-office mandates as a means to force resignations, after an appeals court blocked attempted mass firings at the bureau by the Trump administration in June 2026.
The bureau did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The dispute is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s broader effort to dismantle the consumer protection agency, which was conceived by the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and has long been a target of Republican policy efforts. When Trump appointed Vought, the architect of Project 2025, to oversee the agency in February 2025, Elon Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on X. Vought, who also serves as Office of Management and Budget director, has called for the abolition of the agency and halted most of its work that same month.
The agency deleted nearly 4,000 webpages on its website earlier this year, including all press releases issued before February 2025. The union has noted that for every $1 spent on the bureau, it returns $2.80 to consumers, amounting to at least $21bn in reimbursements since 2010 to consumers the union describes as defrauded by corporate scammers.
Wheeler’s case follows a similar pattern involving Alexis Goldstein, another union member and bureau worker. Goldstein was placed on administrative leave in February 2025 and was fired in February 2026 after she confronted staff with Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), questioning their credentials in accessing data at the agency and recording their actions.
“CFPB is illegally retaliating against me for trying to do my job,” Goldstein said in a statement after her firing. “I acted to protect the sensitive data of Americans and the trade secrets of some of the nation’s largest banks and financial institutions from being accessed by individuals from Doge without CFPB credentials and required training.”
The union filed a grievance over her firing and is awaiting arbitration, which has been delayed, according to the union, by the bureau, which told the union the delay is due to an agency official who is on leave.
Other workers at the bureau criticized the investigation of Wheeler as retaliatory and an intimidation tactic. “Our union will not be cowed by these bush league tactics to silence us,” said Doug Wilson, a member of the union and employee at the agency, in a statement. “If this administration thinks that mysterious investigations into public servants and union leaders like Steve [Wheeler] will intimidate the rest of us into silence, they clearly underestimated us once again,” Tyler Creighton, another union member and employee at the agency, said in a statement. “Yet again, here’s a poorly executed attempt by this administration to silence us through intimidation. Yet again, we’ll just get louder,” added Ravisha Kumar, a third union member, in a statement.