Exclusive | Top CFPB leaders dismissed as Trump team begins to dismantle agency

WASHINGTON — Two top leaders of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were removed from their roles Tuesday — in the first staffing cuts as President Trump’s team begins an ambitious effort to gut the 1,700-person agency, The Post has learned.

Enforcement director Eric Halperin and supervision director Lorelei Salas were placed on administrative leave by Mark Paoletta, the top lawyer at both the CFPB and the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Halperin, who made remarks seen as defying an order from President Trump’s aides to pause all work, resigned in response to being placed on leave.

Both Halperin and Salas worked in the past with Democratic billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations — Halperin as a senior adviser and Salas as a fellow, according to biographies on the CFPB website.

The bureau has been a longtime target of Republicans who accuse it of being unaccountable and overzealous in its policing of financial transactions.

The ousters began at CFPB after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative last week began the process of firing nearly all of USAID’s 10,000 employees — arguing that agency was unnecessary.