Elon Musk Granted Full Access To Sensitive Treasury Department Payment Systems – Accuses Department of Fraud Online

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) gained access to Treasury Department data over the weekend that is considered sensitive.

The news comes days after it was reported Friday evening that his President Donald Trump-backed commission was seeking to get its hands on systems responsible for handling trillions of dollars of annual payments.

Those include Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems, The New York Times reported Sunday. Per the newspaper, Musk’s team was granted its request by newly-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

The system could give the Trump administration another mechanism to attempt to unilaterally restrict disbursement of money approved for specific purposes by Congress, a push that has faced legal roadblocks.
Mr. Musk, who has been given wide latitude by President Trump to find ways to slash government spending, has recently fixated on Treasury’s payment processes, criticizing the department in a social media post on Saturday for not rejecting more payments as fraudulent or improper.

It is not clear whether the team led by Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has blocked any payments since gaining access to the system.

[…]

Mr. Bessent granted access to the payments system to a handful of staff members affiliated with DOGE, including Tom Krause, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group, according to one of the people familiar with the change. Access to the system has historically been closely held because it includes sensitive personal information about the millions of Americans who receive Social Security checks, tax refunds and other payments from the federal government.

Individuals associated with Musk’s executive branch commission were involved with similar attempts throughout the weekend to access systems with the US Agency for International Development and the Office of Personnel Management.

Sunday afternoon, Musk – presumably after reviewing Treasury Department records – accused federal employees of “breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress.”