Latest news with #MarkoElez
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
DOGE staffer who resigned over past social media posts reinstated with higher access: Filing
A Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer who resigned over racist posts that resurfaced on social media last month was reinstated to oversee the slashing of waste, fraud and abuse in March under the agency led by Elon Musk, according to court filings. Marko Elez, 25, allegedly relinquished access to sensitive systems being reviewed by DOGE in early February as divulged by the White House. However, he was listed as a staffer in a lawsuit that required the Trump administration to reveal the identity of the agency's hired workers. Legal documents categorize Elez as a Department of Labor employee detailed to the United States DOGE Service and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since March 5. Filings say he had access to the federal directory of new hires, general ledger accounting system and contract writing system at HHS. 'Mr. Elez was granted read-only access to the above-listed systems in furtherance of the DOGE EOs [executive order] directive to identify waste, fraud, and abuse and to modernize government technology and software to increase efficiency and productivity,' according to court documents. 'Mr. Elez's access to the above referenced CMS systems has been disabled. Mr. Elez has not modified, copied and shared with any unauthorized users, or removed any records from any of the systems he has actually accessed,' it reads. 'There are currently no pending requests to grant Mr. Elez access to other sensitive systems at HHS, nor has Mr. Elez been denied access to any systems at HHS.' The documents confirm that Musk's intent to rehire Elez as a staffer was affirmed. 'He will be brought back,' the tech giant wrote on X amid emerging reports of the 25 year old urging the public to 'Normalize Indian hate' in a deleted post. Vice President Vance, whose wife is Indian, also supported Elez's return. 'Here's my view: I obviously disagree with some of Elez's posts, but I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life,' the vice president said on social platform X, referring to the staffer Marko Elez. 'We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.' 'If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that,' he added. When Elez resigned from DOGE in February, the Treasury Department issued a statement saying that Elez was given 'read-only' access to the highly sensitive payment systems, despite numerous reports indicating that he had the ability to rewrite the payment system base code. The White House did not immediately respond to The Hill's requests for comment on Elez's reinstatement at DOGE. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
01-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
DOGE staffer who resigned over past social media posts reinstated with higher access: Filing
A Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer who resigned over racist posts that resurfaced on social media last month was reinstated to oversee the slashing of waste, fraud and abuse in March under the agency led by Elon Musk, according to court filings. Marko Elez, 25, allegedly relinquished access to sensitive systems being reviewed by DOGE in early February as divulged by the White House. However, he was listed as a staffer in a lawsuit that required the Trump administration to reveal the identity of the agency's hired workers. Legal documents categorize Elez as a Department of Labor employee detailed to the United States DOGE Service and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since March 5. Filings say he had access to the federal directory of new hires, general ledger accounting system and contract writing system at HHS. 'Mr. Elez was granted read-only access to the above-listed systems in furtherance of the DOGE EOs [executive order] directive to identify waste, fraud, and abuse and to modernize government technology and software to increase efficiency and productivity,' according to court documents. 'Mr. Elez's access to the above referenced CMS systems has been disabled. Mr. Elez has not modified, copied and shared with any unauthorized users, or removed any records from any of the systems he has actually accessed,' it reads. 'There are currently no pending requests to grant Mr. Elez access to other sensitive systems at HHS, nor has Mr. Elez been denied access to any systems at HHS.' The documents confirm that Musk's intent to rehire Elez as a staffer was affirmed. 'He will be brought back,' the tech giant wrote on X amid emerging reports of the 25 year old urging the public to 'Normalize Indian hate' in a deleted post. Vice President Vance, whose wife is Indian, also supported Elez's return. 'Here's my view: I obviously disagree with some of Elez's posts, but I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life,' the vice president said on social platform X, referring to the staffer Marko Elez. 'We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.' 'If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that,' he added. When Elez resigned from DOGE in February, the Treasury Department issued a statement saying that Elez was given 'read-only' access to the highly sensitive payment systems, despite numerous reports indicating that he had the ability to rewrite the payment system base code. The White House did not immediately respond to The Hill's requests for comment on Elez's reinstatement at DOGE.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A 25-year-old DOGE staffer who resigned over racist posts is back in government with new access to sensitive systems
A DOGE staffer, who was forced to resign after being linked to racist social media posts, is back in government with fresh access to sensitive systems. Marko Elez has been assigned to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since March 5, per court filings. A 25-year-old DOGE staffer who resigned after being linked to a social media account that shared racist posts is officially back on the government's payroll. According to court filings, Marko Elez now has access to sensitive systems at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor. Elez resigned from his role at DOGE in early February after a report from the Wall Street Journal linked him to a now-deleted account that shared posts including one claiming he was "racist before it was cool." The account also reportedly shared a post calling to normalize 'Indian hate,' and another that suggested Gaza and Israel be 'wiped off the face of the Earth." At the time, the White House confirmed to the Journal that Elez had resigned from his government role. However, the recent court filings reveal Elez is still working as a Labor Department aide in connection with DOGE. The court documents state Elez had been detailed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since March 5 and is also assigned to the United States Digital Service (USDS). Elez has access to several sensitive systems within the Department of Health and Human Services including the National Directory of New Hires and the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System (HIGLAS), which is primarily used to manage and track payments related to Medicare and Medicaid programs. At the Department of Labor, Elez had access to four more sensitive systems: USAccess, DOL Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, DOL Directory Resource Administrator (DRA), and Unemployment Insurance Data and Related Records. The court filing notes he is the only DOL employee who has an employment relationship with DOGE and has been granted permission to access sensitive systems at the agency. Elez has also installed two programs onto DOL systems: a code editor called Visual Studio Code and Python, a programming language, according to court filings. The Department of Labor said it was aware Elez was simultaneously assigned to or employed by another four agencies, not including USDS. Representatives for DOGE, the Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune. The 25-year-old was working in the United States Department of the Treasury when the Wall Street Journal linked him to the racist account. After the news broke, Elon Musk, JD Vance, and U.S. President Donald Trump advocated for Elez's reinstatement. Musk polled X users on whether he should bring back the DOGE staffer after making 'inappropriate statements" while Vance said in a post on X he didn't think "stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life." 'We shouldn't reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,' Vance said. 'So I say bring him back. If he's a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.' Trump later said he was 'with the vice president' when questioned about Elez and Vance's response during a news conference. Elez's brief stint at the Treasury also made headlines after it was revealed he was "mistakenly" given edit access over the department's payment systems. In an affidavit, a Treasury official stated that Elez was 'mistakenly' given 'read/write permissions instead of read-only' in an error that was 'promptly corrected.' The edit permissions were granted during Elez's supervised, walk-through session, and an initial investigation found that 'no unauthorized actions had taken place,' the official said. In a separate court filing, another federal official said that Elez violated Treasury policies by emailing a spreadsheet containing personal information to two other members of the Trump administration. The official said he sent the sensitive information unencrypted and without prior approval, violating the Bureau of the Fiscal Service's policies on handling sensitive information. This story was originally featured on
Fox News
12-02-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Treasury 'mistakenly' gave Musk DOGE worker ability to change payments system: court docs
Marko Elez — who before resigning from the Treasury Department had been a member of Treasury's Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) team — was "mistakenly" given "read/write permissions" on the Secure Payment System rather than "read-only," Joseph Gioeli III of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service declared in a court filing. The filing is connected to a case in which President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were slapped with restrictions regarding who they can grant access to Treasury Department systems that hold "personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees[.]" "On the morning of February 6, it was discovered that Mr. Elez's database access to SPS on February 5 had mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions instead of read-only. A forensic investigation was immediately initiated by database administrators to review all activities performed on that server and database," Gioeli noted in his filing. But he explained that the issue was quickly addressed after it was uncovered. "His access was promptly corrected to read-only, and he did not log into the system again after his initial virtual over-the shoulder session on February 5," Gioeli noted. "To the best of our knowledge, Mr. Elez never knew of the fact that he briefly had read/write permissions for the SPS database, and never took any action to exercise the 'write' privileges in order to modify anything within the SPS database – indeed, he never logged in during the time that he had read/write privileges, other than during the virtual walk-through – and forensic analysis is currently underway to confirm this." Fox News Digital reached out on Wednesday to the Treasury Department, the White House, a DOGE spokesperson and the U.S. Digital Service — which Trump, in an executive order, declared to be "publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service" — but did not receive any responses in time for publication. Thomas H. Krause, Jr. indicated in a court filing that he is "employed as the Senior Advisor for Technology and Modernization at the Department of the Treasury," and that the post "is currently unpaid," but that he is "not seeking compensation" for the job. "I am also designated as a Special Government Employee (SGE)," Krause wrote, noting that "the Treasury Secretary delegated the performance of duties of the Fiscal Assistant Secretary to me, although I have not yet assumed those duties." Krause said that he is currently "the only Treasury DOGE team member," and that he is not a U.S. DOGE Service employee. "Although I coordinate with officials at USDS/DOGE, provide them with regular updates on the team's progress, and receive high-level policy direction from them, I am not an employee of USDS/DOGE," Krause noted. "A second Treasury DOGE team member, Marko Elez, began working at the Treasury Department on Jan. 21, 2025, but resigned from his role on February 6, 2025," Krause indicated. "Marko Elez is a highly qualified software engineer who previously worked at several of Elon Musk's companies, including SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter)." Trump tasked business tycoon Elon Musk with spearheading the DOGE effort, which aims to root out government waste, fraud, and abuse. "As noted in the Gioeli Declaration, I understand from BFS that there was briefly an error that provided Mr. Elez read/write access to the SPS system, but that Mr. Elez did not access that system during that time, and was likely unaware that he had any such read/write access," Krause stated in a footnote of his filing. The Wall Street Journal reported that Elez was tied to a deleted social media account that made racist remarks, such as "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity," and "Normalize Indian hate." But after Elez's resignation, Vice President JD Vance advocated for reinstatement, noting in a post on X that he did not "think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life." Musk responded, "He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine."
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Is Predictably Sloppy And It's Hurting Him In Court
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. Before we get into the latest legal developments in the wide-ranging effort to defend the rule of law and the constitutional order against President Trump's attacks, a quick word on the how sloppy the Trump White House has been. Overnight, the Justice Department had to file two separate corrections in pending court cases to clean up misstatements of fact they made to federal judges in open court. It's an excruciating thing for any lawyer to have to do, but especially for the Justice Department which has prided itself on being a reliable narrator and has earned, for better or worse, the benefit of the doubt in federal court. The impact and significance of the admitted errors isn't entirely clear yet, but they undermine the Justice Department's credibility and make it clear to the judges involved that these are not careful, considered, prudent government actions that deserve to be treated as regular or normal. In the Treasury-DOGE case, the Justice Department now says it was mistaken when it told the court that since-resigned DOGE associate Marko Elez was a special government employee. He was in fact a Treasury Department employee. In the USAID case, the Justice Department admitted it was wildly wrong when it told the court that 500 employees were placed on leave. The actual number was 2,140. It also mistakenly told the court that only future USAID contracts had been frozen when in fact existing contracts had been frozen as well. The pace of the destruction unleashed by the White House combined with its disorganization, its ham-handedness, and the lack of involvement from lawyers at the front end has created an enormous mess for the Justice Department to try to clean up in real time in court. It's not been pretty. Trump being sloppy and non-strategic is neither new nor a surprise, but it might provide an opening to fend off some of his worst actions in his first three weeks in office. U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. (Rhode Island) found that the Trump White House was not complying with his order that blocked OMB's funding freeze. At issue was the failure of funds to resume flowing in full. The judge reiterated his original order and singled out the funding of the National Institutes of Health and the Inflation Reduction Act to make sure it was clear that they were included in his order. Still, reporting as recently as this morning has continued to suggest funds are being held up under the original OMB freeze: Popular Information: Trump maintains funding freeze at NIH, defying court order ProPublica: The Courts Blocked Trump's Federal Funding Freeze. Agencies Are Withholding Money Anyway. The Trump administration has appealed the TRO, even though they are not typically appealable. In a separate lawsuit in Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley blocked the Friday change to the funding formula at NIH that so alarmed scientists, researchers, and universities. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson (DC) ordered Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger immediately reinstated to his job after he was quietly fired by President Trump on Friday night. The special counsel enforces federal whistleblower laws and the Hatch Act. The Trump administration appealed the judge's ruling even though the temporary administrative stay she issued is typically not appealable. President Trump posted on social media that former acting DNI Ric Grenell is going to be the Kennedy Center's interim executive director … except that the Kennedy Center doesn't have an executive director position and it's not clear on what authority, of any, the president is relying on to intervene directly in Kennedy Center affairs. WaPo: The 19-year-old Musk surrogate known online as 'Big Balls' takes on news roles as a senior adviser at State and DHS. WSJ: Meet Steve Davis, the Musk deputy running DOGE. Bloomberg (emphasis added): Then, late Friday night, the DOGE staffers were granted access to all the CFPB's data systems, including sensitive bank examination and enforcement records, according to five people familiar with the matter and emails seen by Bloomberg News. The people asked not to be identified, citing concerns over potential retribution. By Sunday, the agency was a skeleton, with its funding limited and activities suspended. 'We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now. There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.'–Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Berkeley, speaking Friday The new developments at the Justice Department aren't merely warning signs, they don't just 'raise questions,' and they do not simply portend bad things to come. They are the bad things, and they are happening right now. This is it. This is the eye of the storm we warned about: Eric Adams: In a historically corrupt move, the Justice Department has ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop the public corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams. READ: Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove's atrocious memo ordering the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan to drop the Adams case, while admitting the decision was made 'without assessing the strength of the evidence orthe legal theories on which the case is based.' FBI Purge: 'The Trump administration has asked the FBI for a list of probationary employees and individual justifications for keeping anyone who has been at the bureau for less than two years, sparking a new round of fears within a bureau that has been rocked by the first three weeks of Donald Trump's presidency.'–NBC News In related news, President Trump pardoned disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D). When I saw initial reports that President Trump had issued a new executive order pulling back on enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, I had a notion that it would deprioritize it in favor of immigration enforcement or some such. But no! It's a full-throated attack on the statute that is a cornerstone of anti-corruption efforts worldwide, bemoaning how it puts American business at a competitive disadvantage. Trump halted all new FCPA enforcement for six months (with an option to extend for another six months) and ordered a review of all pending FCPA cases. But the kicker was in Trump's description of bribery and other corrupt activity as 'routine business practices in other nations' and his lament that the FCPA is an 'excessive barrier' to U.S. commerce. President Trump claims he has demanded $500 billion in 'rare earth' from Ukraine as compensation for U.S. aid to fend off the Russian invasion. 'Otherwise, we're stupid. I said to them we have to — 'we have to get something. We can't continue to pay this money,'' Trump said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is renaming Ft. Liberty back to Ft. Bragg, but the 'Bragg' now refers not to the Confederate general it was originally named for but to an obscure Army private first class who fought in World War II. In an order Friday but not made public until Monday, Hegseth blocked transgender Americans from joining the military and halted gender-affirming care for current service members. President Trump ordered the immediate dismissals of the boards of visitors for all four military service academies. In response to President Trump's anti-DEI executive order, the Defense Department has begun banning certain books in its school system serving military families. PBS shutters its DEI office, forcing two DEI executives to leave. Bari Weiss' Free Press suggests the move came after it contacted PBS about a tip it received from a 'high-ranking' PBS executive that the public broadcaster was planning to move the two executives to a different department to 'skirt' Trump's DEI executive order. Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill, on setting realistic expectations and saving enough of the foundational bricks of democracy to be able to rebuild in the future: The truth is that we will NOT be able to stop every terrible thing that this administration seeks to do. Elections really do have consequences – as many of us tried with tremendous urgency to make clear last year. But we can slow things down, win some battles, throw sand in the gears of others. If we save some lives, some jobs, some critical government agencies, some measure of press freedom, some medical and subsistence benefits, academic freedom for some schools and universities, and protect the dignity, safety and constitutional rights of some of our most vulnerable fellow Americans, it will be worth it. And it will be from whatever remainder of democratic structure, values, and policies we are able to protect that we will have the space and platform on which to do the work of building an urgently needed new democracy in our country. So our fight today is worth it.
