The federal agency that's supposed to protect you from banks spent Trump's first year back in office walking away from the cases it had already brought against them.

Then the complaints poured in.

A Guardian analysis of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's own data, published November 12, found that complaints against the companies whose lawsuits the bureau dropped shot up by more than 75%. Of the 23 financial firms named in those dropped cases, 17 saw complaints against them go up.

From 30 cases a year to two

From mid-2012 to early 2025, the bureau launched nearly 400 enforcement actions against banks and other financial companies — about 30 a year, the Guardian reported. The bureau has said those actions got consumers more than $21 billion back in refunds and canceled debts.

Since Trump took office on January 20, 2025, the bureau has launched two.

Trump put Russell Vought — his budget director and a key author of Project 2025, which called for the bureau's destruction — in charge of it. Under Vought, the bureau tried to lay off nearly 90% of its staff and to cut its own funding. Federal courts blocked both, the Guardian reported.

Trump's own explanation: the bureau "was a very important thing to get rid of."

The cases they dropped

These aren't small companies. Here is some of what the bureau walked away from, according to the Guardian:

• Zelle. The bureau had sued JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which partly own the Zelle payment app, claiming they pushed it to market without effective protection against scammers — and that customers lost more than $870 million. Dropped. In the year after, complaints rose 19% against JPMorgan, 26% against Wells Fargo and nearly 33% against Bank of America.
• Rocket. The bureau had accused Rocket Homes of steering homebuyers to its sister company, Rocket Mortgage, in a kickback scheme that charged those borrowers higher rates and fees. Dropped a month into Trump's term. Complaints against Rocket Mortgage went from 510 to 1,182 the year after — and complaints from service members and veterans jumped 135%.
• Walmart delivery drivers. The bureau had claimed Walmart pushed its gig drivers into accounts run by a company called Branch Messenger, where they paid $10 million in junk fees just to move their own pay. Dropped. Complaints against Branch went from 46 to 191. Uber drivers, whose earnings also ran through Branch, complained too. "I worked to earn that money," one of them wrote. "I can not access my earnings."
• A Berkshire Hathaway home lender. The bureau had sued Vanderbilt Mortgage, part of Warren Buffett's empire, for making manufactured-home loans without a good-faith check that borrowers could pay them back. Dropped. Complaints rose 39%. Vanderbilt told the Guardian a change of 33 complaints is "extraordinarily small" for a lender its size.
• Capital One. The bureau had accused it of misleading savers about interest rates. Dropped a month after Trump's inauguration.

A former senior lawyer at the bureau, Austin Hinkle, told the Guardian Congress should investigate these "corporate pardons."

"People are getting screwed twice: first by the company, second by the agency that's supposed to stick up for them," Erie Meyer, the bureau's former chief technologist, told the Guardian.

Even finished cases got rewritten

The bureau didn't just drop open cases. It went back after deals that were already done.

Ten days after Trump's inauguration, the bureau settled with the money-transfer company Wise over claims it misled customers about fees. The deal included a $2.025 million fine. Four months later, the Guardian reported, the bureau renegotiated it. Vought signed the new version. The fine dropped to $44,955.

And now the watchdog is hiding what people tell it

Complaints published by the bureau have climbed from nearly 2.7 million in 2024 to 6.3 million so far this year. At the same time, the bureau has made them harder to see. In August it stopped publishing the stories people write when they file a complaint — we covered that decision when it happened — and then pulled millions of them from its public database.

At a July hearing, House Republicans didn't push back on the gutting of the bureau — they asked how to make it permanent.

The next step is a confirmation vote. Trump's pick to lead the bureau, Brian Johnson, was most recently a vice president overseeing credit card compliance at Capital One — one of the companies whose case the bureau dropped. He has agreed to sit out Capital One matters for two years if confirmed, the Guardian reported.

Adding it up

Since January 2025, Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has opened two new enforcement cases, down from about 30 a year, and dropped its cases against 23 financial companies — including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Rocket and Capital One. In the year after the cases were dropped, complaints against those companies rose more than 75%. The bureau also cut one company's fine from $2.025 million to $44,955.

Source

• The Guardian, 'Screwed twice': The CFPB says it's looking out for consumers. Its own data tells a different story, November 12, 2026
• Common Dreams, Report Outlines How Trump CFPB Gave 'Corporate Pardons' to Companies Accused of Illegally Ripping Off Consumers, November 12, 2026