Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about the Elon Musk-led DOGE team’s meddling in the Treasury Department’s payments system. His answers raise additional questions.
During a February 6 interview with Bloomberg’s Saleha Mohsin, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked about the Elon Musk-led DOGE team’s meddling in the Treasury Department’s payments system. Bessent’s answers raise additional questions, which we pose below.
For a detailed timeline of events, click here.
Two “highly trained” professionals?
During the interview, Bessent took issue with Mohsin’s use of the phrase, “DOGE team.” Bessent insisted that “these are Treasury employees, two Treasury employees, one of whom I personally interviewed in his final round.”
Without naming them, Bessent was referring to Tom Krause and Marko Elez. On February 4, Bloomberg reported that both men had “offices in the Treasury Department, along with agency email addresses as well as clearance to access some secure but unclassified Treasury information.”
During a February 5 hearing in a case brought by a coalition of labor and consumer groups, Justice Department lawyer Brad Humphreys identified Krause and Elez as so-called special government employees and alleged that they had “read-only” access to Treasury’s payments system. According to Bloomberg, when Bessent was forming his team in December, he interviewed Krause, who is a tech executive, private equity vulture, and member of Musk’s DOGE demolition crew.
Bessent told Mohsin that “these are highly trained professionals. You know, this is not some roving band going around doing things. This is methodical, and it is going to yield big savings.”
On February 6, Elez—a 25-year-old Musk ally and DOGE agent who was previously an engineer at X and an intern at SpaceX—resigned following revelations of his racist and pro-eugenics tweets.
- Mr. Bessent, do you consider Mr. Elez—a recent college graduate and self-identified racist who urged his followers to “normalize Indian hate” and wrote that “you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity”—to be a competent professional?
- What are Mr. Elez’s qualifications to access Treasury’s payments system? Why, and under what legal authority, did you grant Mr. Elez access to the federal payments system?
Krause, meanwhile, has earned a reputation as a smash-and-grab artist. Notably, he ruthlessly gutted the software company Citrix.
In a February 9 court statement, Krause said that Bessent on February 5 had tapped him to perform the duties of Treasury’s fiscal assistant secretary. While Krause claimed that he had “not yet assumed those duties,” he was nonetheless chosen to take over responsibilities that until January 31 belonged to David Lebryk, the ex-fiscal assistant secretary whom Bessent ousted after he refused to accede to the DOGE infiltration sought by Musk and Krause.
- Mr. Bessent, what makes Mr. Krause qualified to manage Treasury’s payments system? Are you aware that he is a businessman from Big Tech, not an engineer? Why, and under what legal authority, did you grant Mr. Krause access to the federal payments system?
- How can you ensure that Mr. Krause will faithfully disburse more than $6 trillion this fiscal year, including during a looming debt ceiling standoff?
- Mr. Bessent, are you concerned that DOGE’s incursion into the federal payments system could increase the risk of default? Will you accept responsibility if Mr. Musk and his allies trigger a global financial crisis?
- Mr. Bessent, are you aware that Mr. Musk, a major federal contractor via Tesla and SpaceX, stands to benefit from gathering intel about competing government contractors? How can you ensure that Mr. Krause, a DOGE liaison, won’t share sensitive information with Mr. Musk or any other individuals not authorized to see it?
Who has had access to what and when?
On February 6, Bessent told Mohsin: “There is no tinkering with the system. [Krause and Elez] are on read-only. They are looking. They can make no changes. It is an operational program to suggest improvements.” When asked if anyone affiliated with DOGE has ever had the ability to make changes, Bessent responded, “Absolutely not.” Bessent also claimed that he lacks the authority to grant such permission.
However, there have been multiple reports that Elez had “administrator-level” access to Treasury’s payments system from February 1 to February 5 and made “extensive changes” to the source code.
- Mr. Bessent, you claimed on February 6 that nobody with DOGE ties has ever had the ability to tamper with Treasury’s payments system. How do you square your assertion with credible reports that at least one Musk ally previously had read- and write-access to the system?
- Mr. Bessent, when you say that DOGE agents have had “read-only” access, does that refer exclusively to data? What about their access to the underlying code?
- Even if Musk’s DOGE agents had “read-only” access to Treasury’s payments system, why is that acceptable? Why should unqualified and under-scrutinized special government employees working to advance the interests of an unelected billionaire be able to view such highly sensitive information?
Remarkably, during a February 5 court hearing, DOJ attorney Humphreys could not verify the integrity or security of Treasury infrastructure. “I don’t know if I can say nothing has been done” with information from the payments system, Humphreys stated.
- Mr. Bessent, can you confirm the integrity and security of Treasury’s payments system and the information therein? Can you say with certainty that no records were altered or copied? Are allegations that at least one Musk minion tampered with the payments system false?
On February 6, U.S. District Judge Kollar-Kotelly issued an order limiting DOGE’s access to Treasury’s payments system to “read-only” and to Elez and Krause only. Elez resigned hours later. At the time, it was unclear what steps, if any, would be taken to ensure that Elez could no longer access sensitive information. It was also unclear whether Krause’s promotion to fiscal assistant secretary would relieve him of certain restrictions.
Some things became clearer on February 8 when U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer—in response to a lawsuit filed by 19 Democratic state attorneys general—issued an order that went further than Kollar-Kotelly’s. Engelmayer’s order limits access to “civil servants with a need for access… who have passed all background checks and security clearances and all information security training” mandated by laws and regulations. It bars Musk, Krause, and other “special government employees” and “political appointees” from accessing the federal payments system and requires every person prohibited from accessing such information, such as Elez, to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded” from Treasury’s records and systems since January 20.
- Mandating the destruction of improperly downloaded Treasury records suggests that DOGE agents previously had more than “read-only” access to the federal payments system. Mr. Bessent, this contradicts your earlier claim to the contrary. How do you explain this discrepancy? Was access really limited to Krause and Elez at the “read-only” level? When? How do you know and can you prove it?
Has Treasury blocked, or attempted to block, payments? Will Treasury facilitate more disruption?
On February 6, Bessent told Mohsin that “Elon and I are completely aligned in terms of cutting waste and increasing accountability and transparency for the American people. I believe that this DOGE program, in my adult life, is one of the most important audits of government or changes to government structure we have seen.” Later, Bessent asked, “What if we do get some big savings on the spending side from the DOGE programs? […] What if [government spending] actually goes down because of everything we’re doing right now?”
Musk has called for Treasury to stop approving certain payments. According to The New York Times, “Mr. Musk has tried to deploy his engineers to find ways to turn off the flow of money from the Treasury Department to things that Mr. Trump wants to defund.” Experts say that’s another way the Trump administration could unilaterally—and unlawfully—prevent the disbursement of congressionally appropriated funding opposed by President Trump and/or Shadow President Musk. Other illegal efforts to impound funds approved by Congress have hit legal hurdles but are proceeding with devastating effects as the Trump administration ignores multiple court orders.
When asked if his staff has attempted to block any payments, Bessent said, “We have not.”
However, it’s not for a lack of trying. The Times reported that on January 24, Treasury Chief of Staff Dan Katz sent an email telling other officials at the department that “Mr. Krause and his team needed access to the [federal payments] system so they could pause USAID payments and comply with Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to halt foreign aid.” In response, David Lebryk, who was serving as Acting Treasury Secretary while Bessent awaited Senate confirmation and also continued to serve as the department’s fiscal assistant secretary, wrote, “I don’t believe we have the legal authority to stop an authorized payment certified by an agency,” the Times reported.
On January 25, Krause told Lebryk that Treasury should also consider the legal ramifications of continuing to disburse payments in violation of Trump’s executive order. “I believe we can all feel more comfortable that we hold payment at least to review the underlying payment requests from USAID now so that we can be given time to consult [the] State [Department],” Krause wrote, according to the Times.
Granted, this back-and-forth predated Bessent’s January 27 confirmation. Nevertheless, one of the topics that Krause and Bessent reportedly discussed when they spoke in December was “the very mission in which DOGE is now engaged,” according to Bloomberg. Moreover, after he was confirmed, Bessent quickly helped oust Lebryk for refusing to give DOGE access to the federal payments system. CNN reported that once Lebryk was gone on January 31, “Bessent signed off on access to the payments system for the DOGE team detailed to Treasury” by that evening.
In any case, Katz and Krause’s discussion of halting USAID payments contradicts the Trump administration’s claims (e.g., those made by the White House on 2/3, Treasury on 2/4, and Bessent on 2/5 and 2/6) that DOGE agents were given access to the federal payments system to evaluate its “operational efficiency”—not to stop the flow of money to programs they oppose.
On February 2, Musk announced on X that members of his unelected “DOGE team” were “rapidly shutting down” democratically authorized payments from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to certain nonprofits, including a Lutheran charity that has been providing aid to refugees, Bloomberg reported.
Musk’s subsequent assertion that “the corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time” further undermines the Trump administration’s claims that DOGE’s access to the federal payments system was limited to Krause and Elez on a “read-only” basis.
When asked if he would ever heed Musk’s calls to halt payments, Bessent gave a non-answer: “Most of that happens above us. It comes from the departments and the agencies. We are doing a complete review, and I want to emphasize to you and everyone watching, that it is an operational review, it is not an ideological review.”
When asked to respond to concerns that the ongoing conflict over Treasury’s payments system “could hit markets in some way or start to cause a loss of confidence,” Bessent said that “people shouldn’t be concerned.” Bessent claimed that “all the payments are going to be made, they’re going to be in good order, and at the end of this review, there are going to be substantial savings for the American taxpayer.”
The Washington Post reported that Vona S. Robinson, deputy assistant commissioner of federal disbursement services at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said in an affidavit that “a Feb. 10 disbursement to the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. government foreign aid agency,” was blocked as a result of DOGE’s activities.
Moreover, Krause said in a February 11 affidavit that he is “responsible, among other duties, for reducing and eliminating improper and fraudulent payments; waste, fraud, and abuse; and improving the accuracy of financial reporting.” According to Krause: “As soon as I arrived at the Treasury Department, I met with Treasury leadership to begin operationalizing the Treasury DOGE Team’s work. This early work at Treasury included […] ensuring that the Treasury DOGE Team was leveraging its unique technological expertise to help operationalize the president’s policy priorities for the early days of the administration, including by helping identify payments that may be improper under his new executive orders.” (emphasis added)
- Mr. Bessent, how do you square your claim that “all the payments are going to be made” with Mr. Musk’s claims that his DOGE team is “shutting down” certain payments in “real-time”? With Mr. Krause’s statement that he is responsible for “reducing and eliminating improper and fraudulent payments” and “helping identify payments that may be improper under [Trump’s] new executive orders”?
- Mr. Bessent, you said that federal spending might decrease “because of everything we’re doing right now.” Is that an admission that Treasury might block the disbursement of congressionally appropriated funds?
- If DOGE and the Trump administration propose slashing spending on social programs while extending tax cuts for the wealthy, how could their so-called “review” of Treasury’s payments system not be ideological?
How involved has Bessent been in DOGE’s Treasury insurgency?
Between Trump’s election victory and his inauguration, members of his transition team, including some of Musk’s DOGE agents, reportedly asked Treasury officials about the inner workings of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, including the mechanics of halting certain payments.
In addition, Bessent and Krause reportedly discussed “the very mission in which DOGE is now engaged” when the former interviewed the latter in December.
On January 31, four days after Bessent was confirmed as Treasury Secretary, Lebryk, the agency’s highest-ranking career official who had rejected Musk’s intrusion, was pushed out and DOGE agents were granted access to the federal payments system.
Also in late January, Krause and Elez “traveled to a federal facility in Kansas City to meet with [Treasury] staff there responsible for the payment system,” and the pair requested “access to the underlying code,” Bloomberg reported.
All of this suggests that Bessent has been more deeply involved in Musk’s attempted appropriation of Treasury infrastructure than initially understood.
- Mr. Bessent, what did you know about DOGE’s Treasury plans and when?
- What actions have you approved?
- Have you rejected any proposed actions and if so, what were they?
On February 6, Bessent told Mohsin that “two employees [Krause and Elez] are working with a group of longstanding employees.”
- Mr. Bessent, what are the names and titles of Treasury personnel with whom DOGE-aligned special government employees have worked or are working?
- Have any DOGE agents besides Mr. Krause and Mr. Elez ever had access to Treasury’s payment system? Who, when, and in what capacity?
When asked if the DOGE team has access to IRS data or individual taxpayer data, Bessent said that “as of now, there is no engagement at the IRS.” When asked if he would allow Musk-linked special government employees to sift through that information, Bessent said that they haven’t yet requested access, “so we’ll take that when it comes to it.”
Bessent said that he thinks “there is a lot to do there.” When pressed, Bessent reiterated that he would “consider” giving DOGE agents access to IRS data, adding that he doesn’t “imagine anything’s going to go on at the IRS until [May 15th] or beyond.”
- Mr. Bessent, why should DOGE-connected special government employees who are not subject to the same ethics requirements as regular government employees be granted access to individual taxpayer data?
- Does giving DOGE agents access to Treasury’s payments system not pose an unacceptable risk to the privacy of millions of individual taxpayers? To the stability of the U.S. and global economies?