Banking Regulators Send Mixed Guidance on Musk’s Email Ask

Employees at federal financial regulators received a variety of messages during the weekend on how to respond to a Trump administration email asking them to describe what job duties they performed in the last week.

A Saturday email from the Office of Personnel Management instructed approximately 2 million workers across the federal government to send an email to hr@opm.gov by Monday night with bullet points. Confusion subsequently spread across federal financial regulators, as well as other agencies.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was “currently reviewing this request to determine appropriate guidelines regarding what information can be shared outside the agency,” according to a Saturday email from the agency’s executive committee obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The OCC told workers that the guidance would be provided by 8 a.m. Monday.

Workers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. received an email from Chief Information Security Officer Zachary N. Brown instructing them to hold off on responding to the OPM email until they received further instructions from agency leadership. That would come well before the deadline, the email said, according to sources who received it and requested anonymity to protect against retaliation.

The OPM email instructed government workers not to attach any “classified information, links, or attachments.”

That’s a potential complication for federal financial regulators, who deal with large amounts of confidential supervisory information from banks and other companies they oversee. That can include any information from enforcement investigations.

Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Russell Vought, who also leads the Office of Management and Budget, earlier instructed agency employees to not work and stay out of the office.

CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez acknowledged the agency’s current status in a message to staff.

“CFPB Leadership understands that certain work tasks have stopped,” Martinez said in the email, obtained by Bloomberg Law. “If you were not able to perform tasks/work as a result, you may reply and simply reference that you were complying with the current work stoppage.”

The email also said agency headquarters will remain closed for the coming week.