DOGE is doing a heavy-handed "read-only" audit of treasury systems - DOGE is advisory only - it can't change anything - if Musk's team does anything illegal it can and WILL be stopped in the courts
The solution to the security clearances issues was to make up a DOGE sub-team of insiders to the Treasury only - nobody outside it gets to see any sensitive information
This is to help people scared by headlines in some media stories, saying that Musk is in control of the Treasury payment system, claiming falsely that he is going to use it to cut off payments to people. He can’t do that. It is based on a tweet that Musk himself made but his tweets are very unreliable.
DOGE has read-only access to the treasury system. The DOGE team in the Treasury is led by Kraus who is an employee at the treasury and nobody outside the Treasury will have access to the sensitive data they are looking at.
QUOTE STARTS
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has signed off on a plan to give access to the payment system to a team led by Tom Krause, the CEO of Cloud Software Group, who is now working for the Treasury Department and serves as a liaison to Musk’s DOGE group that operates out of the United States Digital Service. One person familiar with the effort said Krause’s role will be subject to safeguards that would not allow any ability to make changes to the system and that no one outside Treasury would have access.
“The secretary’s approval was contingent on it being essentially a read-only operation,” the person said. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/01/musk-claims-doge-lax-treasury-00201946
Musk falsely tweeted to X that DOGE is in the process of cutting off fraudulent payments. But it hasn't got the power to do this and Musk has often lied about many things, he's not a reliable source on Twitter.
He claims that the US Treasury automatically approves all payments including to terrorists and known fraudsters - without giving any evidence and claims that they have already cut off funding for these reasons. But this is just made up.
The Treasury has its own fraud prevention team. It would NOT miss payments to known fraudsters or terrorists. And Musk's team has read only access and he himself can't see the system or details as I said.
So there is no way that Musk can do anything.
Trump could try if he was to respond to a report by an executive order to stop payments. But in that case, a judge would intervene quickly. We saw with the Federal freeze that a judge stopped the freeze, just minutes before it was due to come into effect. Trump could do nothing about it.
We see the typical robustness of the US democracy display itself with Trump's executive orders and the responses. When the courts stop an executive order, Trump has to obey.
You can be sure if DOGE are doing anything illegal the courts will stop it.
But Musk will never be in a position where he can ever have authority to do something like that. Musk can't ever get a job in the US government with real executive authority because of conflict of interest with SpaceX and Tesla.
He would have to put his big companies into blind trusts and let someone else run them, because SpaceX especially gets lots of funding from direct government contracts from both NASA and the Department of Defence to launch things into space. He will never let someone else run SpaceX just to get a job in the US government so it ain't going to happen.
For details see Section: More on why Elon Musk can’t have official positions - because he’d have to put SpaceX into a blind trust for someone else to manage in my blog post
Most people know that Musk can’t be a president because he was born in South Africa. But as you see he can’t even be a cabinet member or any government member with executive because of his businesses and conflicts of interest.
So - what really happened?
Well, DOGE got permission to look at the Treasury computer systems as part of their audit of how the US government payment systems work.
But the way they did it was very heavy-handed. They shut Treasury employees out of their computer systems to go in and look at them themselves. They couldn’t log in any more. That is unprecedented. You don’t need to log everyone else out of a computer system in order to look at it.
Supporters of DOGE would see it as a very detailed audit. But this is very heavy handed, to cut off access of employees to a computer system to audit it.
Based on the NY Times, and the Washington Post, if they got it right, they seem to be
Investigating the Treasury payment system that pays all the money to federal employees and Medicaid etc.
Elon Musk believes a false conspiracy theory that the Treasury pay known fraudsters and terrorists without checking who they are and he believes that by uncovering this he can save the Treasury vast amounts of money each year, NY Times say he thinks the Treasury is losing hundreds of billions in this way. So he is investigating this claim.
Investigating records of all Federal employees held by the treasury with basic information "dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers"
Even so, even in this very heavy handed audit, all they should do is inspect it. DOGE is advisory only and has no executive authority.
They can't change anything. Musk can report to Trump and if Trump wants to make major changes he would likely do them as an executive order.
This is a good short summary of some of what happened.
But NY Times and Washington Post share more details which I'll summarize.
Yes Musk did FALSELY claim that DOGE stopped treasury payments to fraudsters - but that is just in a tweet and it can’t be true - he often lies in his tweets
However some of you will have heard that Musk tweeted that he stopped payments. What is that about? Elon Musk's tweet is here:
Musk: The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments
I only find this story in the Financial Times.
QUOTE STARTS
The extent of DOGE’s access to the payments system appeared to be laid bare on Sunday by Musk, who responded to a post on X which contained a spreadsheet showing payments to a number of Lutheran charities.
The spreadsheet was posted by Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who was pardoned in 2020 after pleading guilty to lying about his contacts with Russians.
Flynn claimed that the screenshots showed “there are MANY more organisations cashing in on our hard-earned money”, adding: “These entities are receiving huge sums, which raises serious questions about how taxpayer funds are being spent and who’s benefiting.”
Musk responded saying “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments”. It is unclear whether the billionaire, who has yet to take an official role within government, would have the legal authority to do so.
Musk, the US Treasury, a spokesperson for Bessent and a spokesperson for DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
https://www.ft.com/content/27ba0a6a-0d9b-4e08-8329-730b581c0481
He does NOT have the authority to do this.
I don't see anyone except the Financial Times even mention the tweet. The likely reason for this is that his tweets aren't seen as a reliable source even on what DOGE is doing.
Musk has a history of tweeting vast amounts of nonsense, or retweeting nonsense by others on Twitter. About the only thing his tweets are reliable evidence of is that Musk himself tweeted that tweet.
What he says about SpaceX is generally reliable - if he says that a rocket took off, or what it did. Telling the world about the doings of SpaceX is probably one of the most reliable things he does online. What he claims they will be able ot do in the future - less so, often a fair bit of fantasy, what they call “Elon time” - saying they will do something this year, say, when a more realistic timeline is a decade or more.
Another way to see that what Musk is saying here can’t be true: if Musk really had turned up large-scale fraud in the Treasury payment system and had stopped the payments - he wouldn't be sharing this in a tweet to his followers. Trump would be doing a press briefing about it, or his press secretary would and it would be headlines in all the mainstream news.
But I don’t see this anywhere on the news. Just his tweet and the Financial Times retelling of the story.
So he is just making stuff up. Just making stuff up to big up his DOGE and give the impression he is achieving things in his work to save money for the US Government.
Musk does not have any executive authority, his role is just advisory and he would be in deep trouble if he did something like that.
Musk’s claim on Twitter that he is shutting down payments for instance to Lutheran Family Services - in reality this is under an executive order by Trump not done by Musk
He claimed that DOGE stopped payments to Lutheran Family Services.
But I think that in reality this was stopped by an executive order that Trump did.
This is about their program to help resettle refugees. Trump signed an executive order to stop this for 90 days.
What It Does: President Trump’s executive order, entitled “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” indefinitely suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions program (USRAP). As part of the order, the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State will submit a reportto the President within 90 days on whether to resume the USRAP.
What It Means: Essentially no refugees will be resettled into the United States for at least 90 days—and likely longer—though there may be case-by-case exceptions.
How Refugees Are Affected: Thousands of refugees who were already approved for resettlement in the United States have had their flights canceled, and virtually all processing of refugees (including applications and resettlement decisions) has stopped completely. Fortunately, though, refugees who have already been resettled in the United States through the USRAP will not be affected.
It doesn’t stop resettlement of refugees already in the USA but
QUOTE “Lutheran Services Carolinas (LSC), the national Lutheran system, and other faith-based ministries were attacked by Elon Musk (Department of Government Efficiency), and our resettlement of legal refugees has been stopped by the federal government,” said the release from Lutheran Services Carolinas. “LSC is deeply concerned about the federal government’s halt of the longstanding, bipartisan-supported resettlement of legal refugees. This decision disrupts the lives of families already here — families who have endured a rigorous, years-long vetting process before finding refuge in the United States.”
QUOTE STARTS Lutheran Services Carolinas, which provides senior living, child care, mental health care and immigrant services throughout North and South Carolina, said in a statement its “resettlement of legal refugees has been stopped by the federal government.” The group’s New Americans Program worked with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and nonprofit Global Refuge to help refugees in Raleigh, Asheville, Salisbury and multiple South Carolina cities access housing, health care, education and jobs.
The group said Monday the shutdown began last week under an executive order pausing refugee resettlement.
https://www.aol.com/nc-religious-group-targeted-elon-202133328.html
Even Musk as the wealthiest man in the world would go to prison if he did anything criminal - simple example, if he deliberately attempted to cast two votes instead of one in Texas
And yes the world’s wealthiest man would be in deep trouble if he did something illegal. Let’s take a simple example. Musk is from Texas., Suppose he deliberately and deceitfully cast two votes in an election instead of one. That has a prison sentence in Texas to protect the integrity of the voting system.
https://versustexas.com/blog/voter-fraud-in-texas/
There is nothing even the cleverest lawyer could do. He would be imprisoned. Likely for several years.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
To show strength of US Judiciary.
Just a joke made with Grok
Even Elon Musk with all his wealth can’t cast two votes in the US elections - as a Texas voter he likely faces 2 or more years in jail if he tried - to protect the integrity of the US voting system.
Similarly even Musk has to pay his taxes, drive on the correct side of the road, his SpaceX launches have to comply with FAA rules and sometimes are halted because they don’t. He is as subject to law as anyone. It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of billions of dollars you have, if you have committed a crime in the USA which has the rule of law and an independent judiciary, then you will be convicted.
So you should never be scared that wealthy people in the USA could do things illegally just because of their wealth. They do get off the hook often for gray area “white collar” crimes which you might think they should be imprisoned for or seriously fined for. But if they do so much as illegally vote twice, deliberately, in a state with a prison sentence for voter fraud - then no matter how many hundreds of billions of dollars they have, they still go to prison.
Top non government employee Lebryk forced out of office for not letting DOGE have access to the treasury system.
For some reason the top non government employee Lebryk at the Treasury was forced into administrative leave by the government - i.e. still paid but had to leave his job. He then resigned. He hasn't shared details but it was in response to Musk's aides wanting access to the computer system that sends treasury money to pay Federal employee wages, Medicaid etc.
Another factor is that the Treasury has started to use the so called extraordinary measures to pay people - moving stuff around so as to pay them without running up more debt because they have already hit the debt limit. They can do this through to some time in spring, when the debt limit crisis will happen and Trump will have to negotiate a raise in the debt limit with the Democrats.
So this is quite a sensitive time for treasury officials to be locked out of the payment system even temporarily.
In more detail, here is what the New York Times found out:
QUOTE STARTS
The inquiries into the Treasury Department’s payment processes have been led by the Musk allies Baris Akis and Tom Krause. Mr. Akis, a relative newcomer to Mr. Musk’s circle, is a venture capitalist who during the transition has focused on the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.
Last weekend, Mr. Krause, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group, again pressed Mr. Lebryk for access to the system, according to two people familiar with the request. Mr. Lebryk declined, the people said.
Mr. Akis and Mr. Krause did not respond to requests for comment.
After the request, Mr. Lebryk sought meetings with Mr. Bessent, the agency’s new secretary, and the Treasury Department’s new chief of staff, Dan Katz, to discuss the situation, according to the people familiar with the matter.
After meetings with Mr. Katz and Mr. Bessent, Mr. Lebryk was placed on administrative leave, two people said. Other career officials will oversee the payment processes after Mr. Lebryk’s departure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/david-lebryk-treasury-resigns-musk.html
The other controversy seems to be about the database of Federal Employees.
DOGE aids are looking at that too [seems to be a separate thing] as reported by the Washington Post.
According to the Washington Post, the main database there has "dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers"
If they are just looking at what's there, then they likely do have that authority. For an example of something they likely would have authority to do, perhaps they are just extracting information from it, for instance about appraisals of government employees? They would have that authority but they could surely have just asked for it. It seems a hamfisted way to do it.
DOGE is purely advisory and doesn't have authority to change things. Trump does but he hasn't issued any executive order to modify the US treasury computer code. If he did there would of course then be legal challenges and he'd be asked why he wants to do that, what the purpose is etc.
What puzzles the treasury officials is why they have been locked out. They try to log in to access a database of Federal employees but they can't. Also Musk's aides are in the building and have brought in sofa beds working overnight - so what are they doing that needs to be done so urgently?
The officials are concerned about cybersecurity and the risk of their system being vulnerable to hackers.
QUOTE
The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems."We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."
The agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague has been moved to an office on a different floor and David Lebryk who is the highest ranking career public servant in the Treasury has resigned after a clash when they wanted access to the system that the treasury uses to pay all the Federal employees, Medicaid etc.
The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.
"We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."
Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.
Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside OPM raised concerns about congressional oversight at the agency and how Trump and Musk view the federal bureaucracy. "This makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk's inner circle at OPM to know what's going on," Moynihan said. ... A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said.
The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.
Musk ... installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
"It feels like a hostile takeover," the employee said.
The new appointees in charge of OPM have moved the agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague, out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, the officials said.
Malague did not respond to a request for comment.
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
The new team at OPM includes software engineers and Brian Bjelde, who joined Musk's SpaceX venture in 2003 as an avionics engineer before rising to become the company's vice president of human resources. Bjelde's role at OPM is that of a senior adviser.
It is not so much worries about what Musk himself or DOGE would do. It is about whether they would do the correct security protocols for working with such sensitive systems.
That is a reasonable concern since Elon Musk and SpaceX have repeatedly failed to adhere to the necessary protocols to be given the highest clearance for the payloads they launch into space for the DoD so they are not allowed to know what it is they launch into space.
Wyden’s list of questions for Trump about security of the DOGE team
Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent a long list of questions he has of DOGE. It is all about security and whether the team of people who now have access to the payment system have sufficient security clearances and whether any of them have any connections with China.
Obviously concerned about the risk of China being able to hack the US treasury payments system and misdirect payments or gain information about it as a result of some spy or mole in Musk's team given Musk's business connections with China. These are valid security concerns.
This is a summary of Wyden's main questions:
Have officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE requested access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems? If so, please provide the identities of those individuals.
Has the Treasury Department granted Bureau of Fiscal Service payment systems access to officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE? If so, please provide the following information:
The legal authority under which the Treasury Department granted access to any of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems to officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE
A detailed description of why the Treasury Department gave officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE and the intended changes to the system that merits such access
A list of all officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE who have been granted access to the Fiscal Services Payment Systems.
Copies of all communications between officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE and Treasury staff related to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.
Has the Treasury Department given access to payment system databases related to the disbursement of Social Security and Medicare benefits? If so, why?
Has the Treasury Department conducted any screenings, background checks, screening of security clearances or other vetting of officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE? If so, please describe these efforts and whether they took place prior to granting officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE access to the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.
Has the Treasury Department done any vetting of potential conflicts of interest posed by Elon Musk’s significant business operations in China prior to granting him access to the Fiscal Service’s payment systems or any other Treasury databases?
Please describe what information security measures and other operational security steps will be taken to ensure that providing officials associated with Elon Musk or DOGE such access does not result in hackers and foreign spies breaching or otherwise gaining access to the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.
As we’ve seen the answer is that outsiders to the Treasury won’t be given access. So the DOGE team inside the Treasury is compiled of a pick of Treasury employees to investigate their own agency.
Musk doesn’t have high levels of security clearance due to not being able to comply with security protocols for SpaceX
Previously Musk has been refused security clearance for the Department of Defence payloads on SpaceX rockets. The reason is that Musk and SpaceX repeatedly refuse to follow security protocols associated with the highest security clearances so they can't be given those clearances.
QUOTE STARTS
Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders, according to people with knowledge of the company and internal documents.
Concerns about the reporting practices — and particularly about Mr. Musk, who is SpaceX’s chief executive — have triggered at least three federal reviews, eight people with knowledge of the efforts said. The Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General opened a review into the matter this year, and the Air Force and the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security separately initiated reviews last month, the people said.
The Air Force also recently denied Mr. Musk a high-level security access, citing potential security risks associated with the billionaire. Several allied nations, including Israel, have also expressed concerns that he could share sensitive data with others, according to defense officials.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/technology/elon-musk-spacex-national-security-reporting.html
So it is very reasonable for Wyden to worry that Musk's aides may not be adhering to proper security protocols while working with the US treasury payments system. Musk for his part tweeted saying that DOGE found that
TWEET STARTS
The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.
They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.
Not even once.
However, as we saw, Musk is very unreliable himself. It's a bit strange to have him on this task as how many people will believe his findings??
I think if it's Musk v. .Treasury officials most would believe the treasury officials.
Musk could easily misunderstand the system they are investigating.
It does NOT seem remotely plausible that the US treasury would have nothing in place to check if payments are to the right people. And indeed they do have an in-house fraud prevention team.
They also have a website where the general public can report fraud and waste
If Musk's team does anything illegal they WILL be taken to the courts over it. You have whistleblower protection in the USA.
This is about whistleblower protection in the Treasury: Prohibited Personnel Practices and Whistleblower Protection
The same applies for any employee working for DOGE. If they spot DOGE doing something illegal they have whistleblower protection too.
See also:
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TIPS FOR DEALING WITH DOOMSDAY FEARS
If suicidal or helping someone suicidal see my:
BLOG: Supporting someone who is suicidal
If you have got scared by any of this, health professionals can help. Many of those affected do get help and find it makes a big difference.
They can’t do fact checking, don’t expect that of them. But they can do a huge amount to help with the panic, anxiety, maladaptive responses to fear and so on.
Also do remember that therapy is not like physical medicine. The only way a therapist can diagnose or indeed treat you is by talking to you and listening to you. If this dialogue isn’t working for whatever reason do remember you can always ask to change to another therapist and it doesn’t reflect badly on your current therapist to do this.
Also check out my Seven tips for dealing with doomsday fears based on things that help those scared, including a section about ways that health professionals can help you.
I know that sadly many of the people we help can’t access therapy for one reason or another - usually long waiting lists or the costs.
There is much you can do to help yourself. As well as those seven tips, see my:
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— might help some of you to deal with doomsday anxieties