One of Elon Musk’s DOGE employees, who is only 25 years old, allegedly screamed at federal employees and called them ‘incompetent’ as they rushed to finish a 36-hour firing spree.
Gavin Kliger – one of the legion of young adults Musk hired to help reduce the federal workforce – allegedly screamed at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) employees during a 36-hour shift for not moving fast enough, CNN reported.
Kliger will have to face the consequences of his alleged actions on April 28 when he goes before Judge Amy Berman Jackson regarding the CFPB layoffs, into which Jackson initially intervened in February.
The Department of Government Efficiency is allegedly in the process of cutting CFPB staff by 90 percent, according to The Daily Beast.
The marathon shift was used to send out at least 1,500 pink slips to workers.
‘He kept the team up for 36 hours straight to ensure that the notices would go out yesterday,’ an anonymously submitted declaration read on Friday during an emergency hearing.
‘Gavin was screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough to ensure they could go out on this compressed timeline, calling them incompetent.’
The 25-year-old Berkeley graduate also allegedly told employees to ignore the court’s order to assess each employee individually before letting them go, The Daily Beast reported.
Mark Paoletta, Trump’s general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, also told employees to ignore any concern about Jackson’s order halting the firings, CNN reported.
Kliger, who graduated in 2020, has reportedly overseen up to 1,700 CFPB firings, CNN said.
Jason Brown, CFPB’s research assistant director, testified at Friday’s emergency hearing that only three senior staffers remain and that none of them were consulted about how many employees they’d need to maintain operations, The Daily Beast reported.
Jackson has paused the layoffs as she investigates whether or not Kilger and his crew violated the court order to individually assess those fired.
For now, the layoffs are ‘not going to happen,’ Jackson said. However, the Trump Administration is appealing.
Jackson is suspicious of the layoffs and has ‘concerns’ that it happened against court-ordered directions, which do not allow the government to gut an agency to a point of being unable to perform.
CFPB was an early target for Republicans, who have wanted to close down the agency, which investigates fraud and protects consumers, for a long time.
Paeletta believes the agency can run on 200 people. He said the consumer response education division could be cut to 20 people from 149, the enforcement division from 248 to 50, and the supervision department to 50 from 487, according to CNN.
Prior to joining DOGE, Kliger voiced controversial views and reposted content from white supremacist Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate on social media between October 2024 to January 2025, Reuters reported.
After receiving his new flashy position, Kliger trolled his new fans by charging $1,000 to read a manifesto about why he joined DOGE – only to find the post is blank.
Kliger made a post on his Substack page titled: ‘Why DOGE. Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America.’
Unlike the rest of his Substack, the post was ‘subscriber only’ with a $1,000-a-month fee – or $10,000 for a whole year – to access a single word of it.
However, those who were curious enough to cough up the extraordinary fee found there wasn’t even that – the post was completely blank.
He was also the one who sent a company-wide email sent to employees at USAID telling them not to come into the agency’s Washington, DC, headquarters.
Kliger sent the instruction from a USAID email address he was provided with as part of high-level access to its systems, along with fellow DOGE nerd Luke Farritor.
While the staff were kept home, DOGE gained access to the agency’s IT system, building security, and classified materials, and began dismantling it.
Musk said last week at a cabinet meeting that DOGE will save the government $150 billion in the 2026 fiscal year.
‘Thanks to your fantastic leadership, this amazing Cabinet and the very talented DOGE team, I’m excited to announce that we anticipate savings in FY 26 from reduction of waste and fraud,’ Musk proclaimed at the meeting.
He said some of the government programs the agency stumbled upon were ‘absurd’ and ‘crazy.’
‘Like people getting unemployment insurance who haven’t been born yet,’ he told the room.
Despite the mind-boggling sum of money he claimed will be saved in next financial year, the prediction comes in significantly less than what the group originally sought out to slash from federal payrolls.
Originally, Musk set out to cut a whopping $2 trillion in waste, fraud and abuse.
In early April, it was revealed that Musk will step down from his role in DOGE.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss will soon be returning to the business world.
The revelation came as his Tesla stock has plummeted in the wake of him running DOGE.