As if things weren’t already terrifying enough as it is, we now have official confirmation that Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has gained access to sensitive Treasury Department data over the weekend, and wasted absolutely no time in using what he supposedly found in that information to accuse the department of fraud.
The news of Musk’s access to the federal financial information comes just literal days after the news was reported that the tech billionaire’s President Donald Trump-backed commission was formally seeking access to the systems responsible for managing trillions of dollars of annual payments.
The sheer rate at which Musk was able to get his hands on exactly what he wanted serves as stark and horrifying proof that the billionaire’s reach is virtually endless.
Those systems included the very same systems responsible for Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems, according to unsettling new reporting from the New York Times.
The Times goes on to report that Musk’s team was happily granted its request by newly-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The newspaper’s report reads:
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 who are heavily associated with Musk’s executive branch commission were reportedly involved in several similar attempts over the weekend to access systems related to the US Agency for International Development and the Office of Personnel Management.
Sunday afternoon — presumably just a short time after Musk was granted access to the sensitive information — the Tesla CEO and devout Trump jockey took to his X (formerly known as Twitter) platform to openly and publicly accuse US 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.”
Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress.
This needs to stop NOW!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
It certainly feels safe to say that this is devolving even faster than we could have imagined.
Featured image via screen capture