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WIRED
26-03-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Inside DOGE's Plan to Invade the Treasury—and Throttle USAID
Vittoria Elliott Matt Giles Mar 26, 2025 1:06 PM Court filings show that from the earliest days of the second Trump administration, Elon Musk's DOGE had a plan to infiltrate US Treasury payment systems—and turn them against USAID. Photograph:From the beginning of President Donald Trump's administration, Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had a plan to monitor USAID payments and was preparing to use US Treasury systems to halt them, according to new court documents, emails, and affidavits obtained by WIRED. Court documents in Alliance for Retired Americans et al v. Bessent et al and American Federation of Teachers et al v Bessent et al reveal the extent of DOGE's penetration into the most sensitive systems at the Treasury, including the Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS), and what exactly DOGE was hoping to accomplish. The bureau is nested within the US Treasury and handles most federal payments, to the tune of more than $5 trillion a year. WIRED first reported that Marko Elez, a former engineer at X, the social media company owned by Musk, had read/write access to two BFS systems: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS). But documents now reveal that Elez also had 'read' access to Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP), an accounting system where federal funds are stored in pre-authorized accounts. Court documents shared by the government reveal Elez had access as of February 1. From court filings, it appears this access was in service of the administration's plans to target USAID. USAID was one of the earliest targets of DOGE and the Trump administration. Less than two weeks after Trump's inauguration, the majority of the agency's staff were placed on administrative leave and funding to many partner organizations was cut off. The documents appear to show how plans were in place for this sudden strangulation in payments to happen. In a January 26 email between Matthew Garber, a top Treasury official, and the Treasury secretary's chief of staff, Garber outlined the new administration's plan to utilize BFS access to halt payments to USAID. 'Fiscal will intercept USAID payments files prior to ingestion into our PAM/SPS systems (this is in place now and can begin immediately),' Garber wrote. 'We developed a process to intercept the file, and additional flags to ensure we catch all USAID payment requests through our systems.' (This email chain was included as part of documents shared in the Alliance for Retired Americans lawsuit.) 'Fiscal will manually pull an unredacted and unmodified copy to share with State officials,' Garber continued, outlining plans from his team. "State officials will review and provide a determination to Fiscal on whether or not to release the file into our normal payment processes.' A top Treasury official's calendar shows that a few days later, Elez arrived in Kansas City, one of the Bureau's main sites, and had a full docket of meet and greets and several deep dives with the teams responsible for each of the systems. The plan was for Elez to spend the next month at the facility to identify 'opportunities to advance payment integrity and fraud reduction goals.' According to a planning sheet, which was also shared with the court, 'only (1) individual (i.e. the designated technical team member)'—which was Elez—'requires access to Fiscal Service systems and data at this time.' Records show that in the final days of January, a request was placed to grant Elez access to both systems. On January 31, David Lebryk, who had been acting Treasury secretary and at one point was the commissioner of BFS, abruptly announced he would retire after he had been placed on administrative leave for refusing to provide DOGE with access to these payment systems. For those who knew the Treasury intimately, this set off alarm bells. That same day, according to an attachment provided by the government, at 6:07 PM, a ticket was filed disregarding a previous order just a day before to give Elez just read only access: 'sorry read/write is needed.' At the same time Lebryk stepped away, DOGE gained access to the entirety of USAID's IT systems and network, according to reporting from ProPublica. The next day, as the dismantling of USAID was underway, according to court documents, Elez was granted access to the source codes of ASAP, SPS, and PAM. He was also granted read-only access to the production database for the SPS and PAM. People with knowledge of Treasury systems tell WIRED that it would be uncommon, if not 'unheard of,' for a BFS employee to have access to all these systems simultaneously. 'Within Fiscal, the mainframe guys don't have write access to the databases and vice versa,' says a former BFS employee who requested anonymity in order to speak freely. Normally, they say, employees at BFS are given the minimum amount of access to systems required to do their jobs. 'No BFS employee would normally have this kind of access.' According to an affidavit from another top Treasury official, though, that plan to isolate USAID payment files outlined by Garber was temporarily paused for the next several days—the State Department had decided it would instead intercept the files. However, on February 4 and February 5, USAID payments flowed to the PAM portal designed by Garber's team. That same affidavit outlined the next steps: BFS was instructed to focus on flagging, quarantining, and sending several payments to State officials that fell under President Donald Trump's foreign aid executive order that stated there would be a 90-day pause on this aid as the State Department reviewed each program. This plan, according to an email chain included in one of the lawsuits, was vetted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was 'comfortable proceeding.' These payments, which originated from the Department of Health and Human Services, included funding for 'Refugee and Entrant Assistance,' 'Gifts and Donations Office of Refugee Resettlement,' and 'Refugee Resettlement Assistance.' By then, Musk had doubled down on his contempt for USAID: In a February 2 post on X, Musk wrote, 'USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.' DOGE operatives, including Luke Farritor, a young member, had gained 'super administrator' access to USAID's systems, according to ProPublica. Farritor, who had also been at the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the General Services Administration (GSA), was reportedly going through USAID's payment system manually, shutting off agency funding, according to the Washington Post. Elez was in the midst of a similar operation in Kansas City: according to that Treasury official's affidavit, the engineer began to manually identify and review the foreign aid payment files that had been sequestered in the folder Garber outlined in that late January email. Meanwhile, Treasury officials sought to give Elez even further access. A February 3 IT ticket, included in case documents from the Alliance for Retired Americans lawsuit, reveals that requests were made for Elez to access the Central Accounting Reporting System (CARS), 'the electronic system of record for the government's financial data.' That same day, a motion filed by the plaintiffs in another lawsuit alleges Elez copied and downloaded a pair of USAID files from the PAM database to his laptop; around that same time, an affidavit from the Bureau's chief security officer said Elez emailed a spreadsheet with personally identifiable information to two GSA officials via unencrypted channels. (Both of these actions are at the core of one of the lawsuits against Bessent and the Treasury Department; the plaintiffs in that suit were recently granted expedited discovery to access records related to Elez's tenure at BFS.) A DOGE team had already established a presence at GSA, which included Farritor, as well as former Tesla employee Thomas Shedd and other DOGE members Ethan Shaotran and Edward Coristine. After WIRED reported on February 4 that Elez had unprecedented access to the Treasury's payments systems, Bessent asserted in a letter to Congress that Tom Krause, then a special government employee associated with DOGE at the Treasury, only had 'read' access. Elez was not mentioned in that letter. In her memo granting a preliminary injunction in the American Federation of Teachers lawsuit, filed on March 24, Judge Deborah Boardman wrote, 'according to a spreadsheet attached to a February 3, 2025 email from a Treasury executive point person for the engagement, as of February 1, Elez had access to Treasury systems including PAM, SPS, and ASAP, and it was recommended that his access to other Treasury systems be expanded.' On February 5, while Elez had access to Treasury's most sensitive systems, he received an email from the deputy assistant commissioner for enterprise IT operations noting that, though he had been issued a BFS laptop, he had yet to sign the Bureau's 'rules of behavior.' (This email was included amongst documents shared by the government in one of the lawsuits.) Those rules include, following 'laws, regulations, and policies governing the use and entrance to such facilities,' and protecting any 'Fiscal Service data, equipment and IT systems from loss, theft, damage, and unauthorized use or disclosure.' Elez, it would appear, had already violated these rules by sharing the data with the GSA officials. The next day, Elez resigned after the Wall Street Journal sought comment for a report about racist posts on social media accounts that appeared to belong to him. Elez is now one of the many DOGE operatives working at the Social Security Administration. In late February, USAID said it would cancel 90 percent of the agency's contracts. The contract cancelations threw nonprofits around the world into chaos, and slowed the response to infectious diseases. Earlier this month, a federal judge said the dismantling of USAID 'likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways.' The Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This week, Trump signed an executive order stating that all federal payments should be consolidated within the Treasury. The order claims that doing so will help fight fraud, waste, and abuse. Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, believes the order means that, 'instead of having to send some DOGE guy into an agency to control the payments, it all happens in one place. It moves power away from agencies and centralizes it in the White House.' In his order, Trump claimed that $1.5 trillion passes through other avenues, known as non-Treasury disbursing offices. These are nested within certain agencies that are able to disburse funds without going through the BFS system. Moynihan alleges that the strangulation of USAID's funding could be a 'harbinger' of potential changes at other agencies. The administration appears particularly focused, he says, on 'the president having absolute power and control over where money goes regardless of laws on impoundment or statutes on agencies.' 'It's a consolidation of power in the name of efficiency,' he claims.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
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. Treasury Department Says Doge Will Have 'Read Only' Access To Payment Systems In Letter To Congress "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. Read On The Fox News App "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. Trump Admin Files Motion To Vacate Restraining Order Prohibiting Doge Access To Treasury Payment Systems 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. Trump 100% Disagrees With Federal Judge's 'Crazy' Ruling Blocking Doge From Treasury System Click To Get The Fox News App 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."Original article source: Treasury 'mistakenly' gave Musk DOGE worker ability to change payments system: court docs
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Treasury Department revokes access ‘mistakenly' given to Musk aide
A former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer 'mistakenly' received editing access to a sensitive federal payment system at the Treasury Department for a brief period last week before staff revoked his capabilities. Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE staffer who resigned Friday, did not use the additional privileges to make any changes to the database, Treasury Department official Joseph Gioeli III said in a court filing Tuesday. '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,' Gioeli said. Gioeli is a deputy commissioner at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which oversees the system that handles 90 percent of federal payments. Treasury Department officials previously said Elez and Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause received read-only access to the sensitive payment system, after the DOGE team's access sparked outcry from Democrats and other outside observers. Gioeli explained in the filing that Elez was the only employee who received direct access to the Fiscal Service system and its source code, although he was limited to 'read-only' access and could not make any changes. Krause, on the other hand, was given 'over the shoulder' access, meaning he could view the system while it was accessed by another person with the required permissions. '[I]t was agreed that in the near-term only a single Treasury employee, Mr. Elez, would be designated as the 'technical team member' who would exercise this read-only access,' Gioeli said. Treasury Department staff discovered Thursday that Elez's access to one portion of the Fiscal Service, known as the Secure Payment System (SPS), 'had mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions instead of read-only.' An initial investigation found that Elez had only accessed the system during a 'supervised, walk-through session' with staff the day before and his access was 'promptly corrected' to read-only. 'While forensic analysis is still ongoing, Bureau personnel have conducted preliminary reviews of logs of his activity both on his laptop and within the systems and at this time have found no indication of any unauthorized use,' Gioeli wrote. Elez resigned Friday after The Wall Street Journal uncovered several racist social media posts he made from a now-deleted account. DOGE leader Elon Musk said the 25-year-old would be rehired, a move that was supported by Vice President Vance. However, several recent court filings have said Elez is no longer employed by the Treasury Department. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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."
The Hill
12-02-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Treasury revokes access ‘mistakenly' given to Musk aide
A former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) 'mistakenly' received editing access to a sensitive federal payment system at the Treasury Department for a brief period last week before staff revoked his capabilities. Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE staffer who resigned Friday, did not use the additional privileges to make any changes to the database, Treasury official Joseph Gioeli III said in a court filing Tuesday. '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,' Gioeli said. Gioeli is a deputy commissioner at the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which oversees the system that handles 90 percent of federal payments. Treasury officials previously said Elez and Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause received read-only access to the sensitive payment system, after the DOGE team's access sparked outcry from Democrats and other outside observers. Gioeli explained in the filing that Elez was the only employee who received direct access to the Fiscal Service system and its source code, although he was limited to 'read-only' access and could not make any changes. Krause, on the other hand, was given 'over the shoulder' access, meaning he could view the system while it was accessed by another person with the required permissions. '[I]t was agreed that in the near-term only a single Treasury employee, Mr. Elez, would be designated as the 'technical team member' who would exercise this read-only access,' Gioeli said. Treasury staff discovered Thursday that Elez's access to one portion of the Fiscal Service, known as the Secure Payment System, 'had mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions instead of read-only.' An initial investigation found that Elez had only accessed the system during a 'supervised, walk-through session' with staff the day before and his access was 'promptly corrected' to read-only. 'While forensic analysis is still ongoing, Bureau personnel have conducted preliminary reviews of logs of his activity both on his laptop and within the systems and at this time have found no indication of any unauthorized use,' Gioeli wrote. Elez resigned on Friday after The Wall Street uncovered several racist social media posts he made from a now-deleted account. DOGE chair Elon Musk said the 25-year-old would be rehired, a move that was supported by Vice President JD Vance. However, several recent court filings have said Elez is no longer employed by the Treasury.
