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To do this, he had to fire a long-time employee of the Ministry of Finance.
Billionaire Elon Musk and his government efficiency team (DOGE) have gained access to the US Treasury Department's payment system, the New York Times reported.
Donald Trump has tasked Musk, who heads the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, with identifying cases of fraud and waste in the government, so the businessman has been trying to gain access to the system used by the Treasury to distribute federal funds.
Sources told the publication that one of the people associated with DOGE who now has access to the payment system is Tom Krause, CEO of the Silicon Valley company Cloud Software Group.
Last weekend, Krause pressured Deputy Treasury Secretary David Lebrik, who has served in various positions at the U.S. Treasury Department for 30 years, to give him access to the system, but he refused. This week, Lebrik was first placed on leave and then retired. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant gave Musk’s team access to the system.
The system makes payments on behalf of federal agencies worth more than $6 trillion each year. It contains the personal information of millions of Americans who receive Social Security benefits, tax refunds and other money from the government.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, confirmed in a post on the Bluesky social network that Musk's team had access to the data.
“Sources reported that Treasury Secretary Bessant gave DOGE full access to this system. Social Security and Medicare payments, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that directly compete with Musk’s own companies. They gave access to everything,” Wyden wrote.
In a letter to Bessant on Friday, he expressed concern that any "politically motivated interference" in the payment system "risks serious harm to our country and economy."
“I can’t imagine any compelling reason why political figures who have demonstrated blatant disregard for the law should be given access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems,” the senator noted.
The Department of Government Efficiency is not a federal department. It is a unit created by Trump and located in the White House.
However, the publication's sources claim that members of Musk's team who gained access to the payment system became Treasury employees, passed a state inspection, and received the necessary permits.
