Musk Surrogates Are Reportedly Seeking Access to Treasury Department’s Payment Systems
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Surrogates for billionaire Elon Musk have demanded access to the systems that the U.S. Department of the Treasury uses to distribute Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as federal employees’ paychecks, payments to federal contractors, grants, tax refunds, and a slew of other functions.
On Friday, The Washington Post reported on the troubling development in which the unelected billionaire backer of President Donald Trump is reportedly seeking access to the systems responsible for making trillions of dollars in payments each year. Moreover, the surrogates for Musk have clashed with David Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at Treasury, who on Friday announced his retirement.
After winning November’s election, Trump named Musk to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory commission of sorts ostensibly intended to excise waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending. The president signed an executive order instructing all federal agencies to give the panel “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”
Musk, who owns X, formerly Twitter, has repeatedly expressed a desire to allow X users to make payments on the platform as part of his aim to make X the “everything app.” This week it was reported that X will partner with VISA to help achieve that end.
A spokesperson for “DOGE” declined to comment to the Post, which reported:
It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts.
Also on Friday, Reuters reported that aides to Musk locked out employees of the Office of Personnel Management from the agency’s computers, according to two employees who spoke to Reuters for a story that was published on Friday.
