Before a judge halted the takeover in February, President Donald Trump’s administration was planning to fire the overwhelming majority of employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and then fulfill the agency’s legal obligations with a skeleton crew, a top CFPB official testified on Monday.

During a lengthy court hearing on Monday, CFPB’s Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez gave a full sworn account of the chaos and confusion that has consumed the federal agency that was set up to protect the public from unfair corporate practices ever since the Department of Government Efficiency and Trump administration officials moved to dismantle it.

His testimony provided a window into what is happening internally as DOGE spearheads Trump’s mandate to slash the federal government.

“Absent the temporary restraining order, the majority of the CFPB employees would have been terminated?” a lawyer representing the plaintiffs asked Martinez.

“The majority, yes,” Martinez said, adding the remaining employees would have been fired in later phases of the takeover.

Throughout his six-hour testimony, Martinez described the back-and-forth that played out in recent weeks among acting CFPB Director Russ Vought, DOGE, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget. Officials toggled between halting and partially reinstating the agency’s work as they hastily slashed it and then scrambled to put pieces back in place to comply with law – in some cases losing key data and services along the way.

“I was having a hard time processing what was happening,” Martinez said, describing the early days of DOGE’s takeover of CFPB.

“So is it fair to say that there’s thought going into it, but only after? It’s like, shoot first and ask questions later?” Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked, after Martinez described how the agency was forced to cancel numerous critical contracts but rescinded some of those terminations soon after. Martinez agreed.

The hearing also shed light on the unique relationship between DOGE representatives and career civil servants, with Martinez frequently calling DOGE representatives the newly installed leaders of the CFPB.

“I don’t understand, why are you using them with leadership to refer to DOGE unless you had been told that DOGE was now your leadership,” asked Judge Jackson.

“They were designated as senior advisers, ma’am,” Martinez said.

“Senior leaders of the CFPB,” Judge Jackson asked.

“Correct,” Martinez said.

Martinez recalled everything from DOGE representatives’ first arrival at CFPB’s office in the first week of February — and the acting director’s email ordering CFPB employees to stop working — to the immediate chaos that ensued, as well as efforts by him and other career officials at CFPB to figure out what has been terminated and how to reinstate critical functions of the agency.

“There were a couple of high-priority issues that would have been devastating had it stopped,” Martinez said at one point.

“I was very, very concerned about the Consumer Response Center going down,” Martinez said, explaining potential backlash that could occur if those systems halted. He said he eventually coordinated a discussion between the head of that unit and DOGE’s representatives to “help them understand why his program was so important.”

On March 2, after much confusion and frustration as to what type of work CFPB was authorized to perform, OMB’s General Counsel Mark Paoletta, who has been representing Vought, eventually sent a letter directing CFPB employees to perform statutorily required duties.

But even after some units were told to return to work, they continued experiencing challenges — including loss of personnel and access to files of those who have left, according to accounts showcased during the hearing.

Jackson acknowledged the extraordinary situation workers at CFPB are facing, and she asked a series of questions to the witness.

“Would you say that sending out an order that says ‘Do no work’ is typical?” Judge Jackson asked.

“No,” Martinez responded.

“Would you say that canceling all the contracts before the analysis as to whether these are duplicative, worthwhile, not worthwhile, is typical?” the judge also asked.

“No,” Martinez again responded.

“Would you say that firing all probationary employees and two-year employees from the get-go is typical?” the judge asked.

“No,” Martinez responded.

“Would you say that trying to implement a brief without notice before the new director is even put in place, is typical?” the judge continued.

“No,” Martinez again replied.

“And would you say putting the rest of the employees on administrative leave with an order to do no work is typical?” the judge asked.

“No,” Martinez responded.

Jackson is considering issuing a preliminary injunction to effectively halt the breakdown of the CFPB, which she temporarily stopped last week. During Monday’s hearing, Martinez was grilled about emails that he had produced wherein he discussed carrying out the mass terminations despite the court’s order.

“You said that, in some ways, the delay was a blessing, because it gave you more time to figure out how to accomplish this wide-scale termination, right?” a lawyer asked.

“Yes,” Martinez said.

“And so you conveyed things like, there really isn’t going to be a CFPB now, right?” the lawyer continued.

“When you’re ripping out a number of people and functions, yes,” Martinez said.