Meet a little-known scumbag behind some big DC chaos

You might have seen Mark Paoletta’s name in the news recently thanks to his role as acting chief legal officer of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which President Donald Trump is busy trying to dismantle. Paoletta is also somehow the general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget, a job he held in the first Trump administration. You’d think those would both be full-time gigs, but that’s just because you don’t understand government efficiency.

But Paoletta is so, so much more than just a lawyer willing to dismantle the government because Trump says so. He’s also a longtime scumbag most notable for his ceaseless support of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and his wife, Ginni.

In his current job, Paoletta has been leading the effort to fire roughly 1,400 CFPB employees, leaving a skeleton crew of about 200 people. The National Treasury Employees Union sued to block the firings and won a preliminary injunction. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, said CFPB could fire employees who agency leaders “determined, after a particularized assessment, to be unnecessary to the performance of defendants’ statutory duties.”

Just three days later, agency leaders sent termination notices to more than 1,400 employees. An anonymous CFPB employee told the court that the Department of Government Efficiency sent over Gavin Kliger, who is mostly notable for his enthusiasm for retweeting white supremacists like Nick Fuentes. Kliger, the declaration said, made employees handling the firings stay up for 36 hours straight and screamed at them when he thought they weren’t working fast enough.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/28/2318795/-Meet-a-little-known-scumbag-behind-some-big-DC-chaos