Musk’s Access to Payment Systems Is ‘The Single Greatest Threat Risk,’ Treasury Assessment Says

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Federal employees at multiple agencies received an email advising them to cut off any access to payment systems that Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” may have.

Titled “Recommendations,” the email was sent to members of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s IT division and others. The message was viewed and reported on Friday by Wired, which said the email came from a threat intelligence team in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Musk and his DOGE staffers have been given access to the department’s payment systems, and with it, sensitive information on tens of millions of Americans – including their Social Security numbers and bank account numbers. One of those staffers includes 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who was fired from an internship after allegedly sharing proprietary information with a competitor.

President Donald Trump appointed Musk to lead DOGE, which was branded as an advisory commission on government savings. Instead, Musk and his team have unprecedented access to the levers of the federal bureaucracy and have been making personnel moves and withholding congressionally appropriating funds. Musk has a particular disdain for the United States Agency for International Development, which has been all but shuttered.

“There is ongoing litigation, congressional legislation, and widespread protests relating to DOGE’s access to Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” reads the email reviewed by Wired. “If DOGE members have any access to payment systems, we recommend suspending that access immediately and conducting a comprehensive review of all actions they may have taken on these systems.”

The email goes on to note reports that Musk and company have locked certain federal employees out of their computer systems, and said DOGE staffers’ access to payment systems “likely poses the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced”:

There is reporting at other federal agencies indicating that DOGE members have performed unauthorized changes and locked civil servants out of the sensitive systems they gained access to… We further recommend that DOGE members be placed under insider threat monitoring and alerting after their access to payment systems is revoked. Continued access to any payment systems by DOGE members, even “read only,” likely poses the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.

Neither the Treasury Department nor the White House responded to Wired for comment.