Tracking the DOGE Treasury Raid

Unelected billionaire Elon Musk and his DOGE demolition crew have infiltrated the Treasury Department’s payments system. We’re tracking this crisis as it unfolds.

Last updated: February 14, 2025

Unelected billionaire Elon Musk and his DOGE demolition crew have infiltrated the Treasury Department’s payments system. This anti-democratic attack on critical infrastructure—part of Musk’s broader, ongoing coup—has been aided and abetted by Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. Here are some questions we think people should be asking Bessent.

We’re tracking this crisis as it unfolds. Please email us at [email protected] if you have questions, comments, or concerns.

What is the Treasury Department’s payments system?

“The Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion in annual payments to households, businesses and other entities nationwide. These payment systems process more than a billion payments annually and are responsible for the distribution of Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax refunds, payments to federal employees and contractors, including competitors of Musk-owned companies, and thousands of other functions.” [Source: Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, January 31]

What is at stake in DOGE’s ongoing takeover?

“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy […] It appears that Musk’s behavior is forcing out highly qualified and experienced career public servants in order to get his way and fulfill Trump’s goal of eviscerating the federal budget, including potentially by cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits for millions of Americans who are already struggling to pay their bills or buy groceries.” [Source: Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, January 31]

For more, see this memo from the Progressive Change Institute and follow Nathan Tankus’ reporting on this unfolding crisis.

Key people involved

• Donald Trump: U.S. President; supporter of oligarchy with autocratic ambitions
• Elon Musk: Head of DOGE effort to consolidate plutocratic power; world’s richest man
• Scott Bessent: President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary; ex-hedge fund manager
• Dan Katz: Treasury Chief of Staff; former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute 
• Tom Krause: DOGE agent; delegated to perform duties of Treasury’s fiscal assistant secretary
• Marko Elez: Erstwhile DOGE agent; has had access to Treasury’s payments system
• David Lebryk: Former fiscal assistant secretary at Treasury, ousted in DOGE coup

Timeline of events

October 2024

• Multi-centi-billionaire Elon Musk vowed that if billionaire Donald Trump were elected president, he would help him cut at least $2 trillion in annual federal spending even though doing so would cause severe material harm.

November 2024

• Trump won the presidential election. Musk spent at least $288 million backing Trump and other Republican candidates during the 2024 election cycle. Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter, which he renamed X and turned into a “pro-Trump echo chamber,” was also influential.

• Musk and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy announced that, at Trump’s request, they would co-lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a thinly veiled attempt to further consolidate plutocratic power by slashing publicly beneficial federal spending and usurping democratic authority. Ramaswamy quit DOGE on Inauguration Day, leaving Musk in sole charge.

• Trump nominated billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to lead the Treasury Department.

December 2024

• As Bessent assembled his staff, he interviewed Musk ally Tom Krause—a tech executive, private equity vulture, and DOGE member—according to Bloomberg. Bessent and Krause reportedly talked about “the very mission in which DOGE is now engaged.”

December 2024-January 2025

• Members of Trump’s transition team, including some of Musk’s DOGE agents, asked Treasury officials about the inner workings of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, including the mechanics of halting certain payments. “They seem to want Treasury to be the chokepoint on payments, and that’s unprecedented,” said one unnamed source.

• As CNN reported: “Before Trump’s inauguration, members of his transition landing team wanted to know granular details about the bureau’s proprietary computer systems, including ‘each step in the disbursement process.’ They also wanted to visit field offices where government workers, in Philadelphia or Kansas, work on computers that disburse payments.”

January 20

• Trump was inaugurated.

• Trump issued dozens of executive orders, including one that formally established DOGE, one that called for “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing,” and another that called for pausing the provision of foreign aid.

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,” according to The New York Times.

• Katz’s message contradicts subsequent arguments (e.g., from Treasury on 2/4 and Bessent on 2/5 and 2/6) that Krause and other 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.

• In response to Katz, David Lebryk, who was Acting Treasury Secretary while Bessent awaited 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.

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, The New York Times reported. “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 newspaper.

January 27

• Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ordered federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance,” an illegal power grab that led to the disruption of Medicaid and Head Start payments.

• The Senate confirmed Bessent as Treasury Secretary in a 68-29 vote.

January 28

• In response to a legal challenge brought by a group of nonprofits and a small business organization, U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan temporarily blocked part of OMB’s spending freeze. 

• Democratic attorneys general in 22 states and the District of Columbia also filed a lawsuit against OMB’s order.

January 29

• OMB rescinded its memo freezing federal spending. However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that OMB did so to nullify Judge AliKhan’s injunction and that the Trump administration still expected agencies to comply with its other directives to review and suspend payments not aligned with the president’s reactionary agenda. 

• Evidence suggests that congressionally appropriated funds are indeed being unlawfully impounded in defiance of the U.S. Constitution and court orders.

• The New York Times reported that “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.”

January 31

• U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell sided with the 23 attorneys general who sued the Trump administration over its spending freeze, becoming the second jurist to temporarily block OMB’s order.

• The Washington Post reported that Lebryk had been ousted from his role as Treasury’s fiscal assistant secretary after he refused to grant DOGE access to the federal payments system.

• As the Post subsequently noted, successfully seizing the “government’s checkbook” could give “Musk and his team a way of cutting out agencies and more directly taking over the mechanism for paying or not paying bills and grants.”

• CNN reported that “with Lebryk gone, Bessent signed off on access to the payments system for the DOGE team detailed to Treasury by Friday evening.”

• However, Musk’s DOGE agents had reportedly been operating as if they already had access. As CNN noted: “DOGE officials, in the lead up to Bessent’s decision to sign-off on their access, had been operating from the position that Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order establishing their agency had already authorized their access. That order, in part, directs the heads of federal agencies to take ‘all necessary steps’ within the law to ensure Musk’s group has ‘full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.’”

• According to CNN: “Some of the members of Trump’s landing team present for the initial transition meetings are now working at the Treasury Department. Among them is Baris Akis, a Musk ally who is the co-founder of a venture capital firm, Human Capital. Akis’ presence raised alarms among some of the Treasury officials present for those early meetings, since he was not an official member of the incoming Trump administration and didn’t have a security clearance at the time, the sources told CNN. Akis, along with a few others affiliated with Musk’s DOGE, has been in the Treasury building in recent days. Sources familiar with the department tell CNN they ‘rove around as a pack’—emphasizing how the group is working in the building in a way that is separate from the rest of the department’s staff.”

• Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a letter to Bessent demanding answers about Musk-led efforts to gain access to Treasury’s payments system. Wyden asked Bessent to provide answers by February 12.

• Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called for an investigation into DOGE’s campaign to commandeer Treasury’s payments system, including the expulsion of Lebryk. 

February 1

• The New York Times reported that Musk’s DOGE minions had gained “full access” to Treasury’s payments system late on Friday, January 31. The headline was later changed to remove the word “full.”

• The Wall Street Journal reported that “Bessent approved the arrangement on the condition that the DOGE representatives’ activity be documented and monitored.”

• However, as New York magazine’s Chas Danner observed, the newspaper “doesn’t specify who might be doing that monitoring; the Treasury Department’s inspector general was one of the 15 independent-agency watchdogs the Trump White House purged” on January 24.

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 assertion that “the corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time” undermines the Trump administration’s subsequent claims (e.g., from the White House on 2/3, Treasury on 2/4, DOJ on 2/5, and Bessent on 2/5 and 2/6) that, excepting previously authorized Bureau of the Fiscal Service staff members, access to the federal payments system was limited to one or two Treasury special employees—Krause and Marko Elez, both DOGE liaisons—on a “read-only” basis.

• Trump told reporters that Musk is “doing a good job.” “He’s a big cost cutter,” Trump said. “Sometimes we won’t agree with it and we’ll not go where he wants to go, but I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy, very smart, and he’s very much into cutting the budget of our federal government.”

• Warren sent a letter to Bessent condemning his decision to grant DOGE agents access to the federal payments system and asking him to clarify the role he played in sidelining Lebryk and authorizing Musk’s power grab. Warren asked Bessent to provide answers by February 7.

February 3

• The Revolving Door Project called on House Democrats to make a privileged impeachment motion against Bessent for aiding and abetting Musk’s anti-democratic infiltration of Treasury’s payments system.

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged Bessent to revoke DOGE’s access to the federal payments system.

• The Alliance for Retired Americans, American Federation of Government Employees, and Service Employees International Union sued Bessent, the Treasury Department, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service to halt what the plaintiffs characterize as the “unlawful ongoing, systematic, and continuous disclosure of personal and financial information” to Musk, DOGE, and others.

• Bessent told Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee that Musk and his DOGE team “do not have control over a sensitive government system that manages the flow of trillions of dollars in payments,” Politico reported, citing five lawmakers who attended the closed-door meeting.

• White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the access to Treasury’s payments system that Musk’s DOGE team had been “granted so far was ‘read only,’ meaning the staff members could not alter payments,” The New York Times reported.

• Judge AliKhan extended her injunction against OMB’s spending freeze.

February 4

• WIRED reported that Elez had “direct access” to Treasury’s payments system and that his “privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the U.S. government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS).”

• According to WIRED: “Despite reporting that suggests that Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force has access to these Treasury systems on a ‘read-only’ level, sources say Elez, who has visited a Kansas City office housing BFS systems, has many administrator-level privileges. Typically, those admin privileges could give someone the power to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

• The outlet added: “A source says they are concerned that data could be passed from secure systems to DOGE operatives within the General Services Administration. WIRED reporting has shown that Elon Musk’s associates—including Nicole Hollander, who slept in Twitter’s offices as Musk acquired the company, and Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who now runs a GSA agency, along with a host of extremely young and inexperienced engineers—have infiltrated the GSA and have attempted to use White House security credentials to gain access to GSA tech, something experts have said is highly unusual and poses a huge security risk.”

• Talking Points Memo reported that Treasury employees were worried that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the federal payments system.

• If that happened, then the Trump administration’s statements (e.g., by the White House on 2/3 and Treasury on 2/4) denying that anyone associated with Musk’s DOGE team had more than read-only access to the federal payments system were false. In addition, Bessent’s 2/3 claim that Musk’s team did “not have control” over Treasury’s payments system and his 2/6 claim that no DOGE agents ever had the ability to make changes would also be inaccurate. 

• Bloomberg reported that Krause and Elez had “offices in the Treasury Department, along with agency email addresses as well as clearance to access some secure but unclassified Treasury information.”

• Before Trump took office, “a member of the transition team began setting up meetings between Treasury staff, Krause and Elez,” Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed source. In late January, “Krause and Elez traveled to a federal facility in Kansas City to meet with the agency staff there responsible for the payment system,” Bloomberg continued, citing the same anonymous source. “They also sought access to the underlying code, the person said—alarming some Treasury staff, because the operation of this infrastructure is tightly controlled due to its critical position in the US financial system,” the outlet noted. “It’s unclear whether the duo have obtained direct access to the code.”

• Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries introduced legislation to prohibit Musk’s DOGE agents from tampering with the federal payments system. 

• Warren and Wyden sent a letter asking the Government Accountability Office to conduct an investigation of Bessent’s move to grant Musk’s DOGE affiliates access to Treasury’s payments system.

• Treasury official Jonathan Blum released a letter to Congress (originally addressed to Wyden in response to his 1/31 inquiry and Warren in response to her 2/2 inquiry). Blum wrote that Krause was conducting a “review” of the federal payments system. Blum added that “currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury Employee, will have read-only access to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (emphasis added)

• Warren took issue with the letter, saying, “It asserts that a set of Treasury staff members have ‘read-only’ access but fails to answer questions about non-Treasury employees, like those working for Elon Musk and DOGE.”

February 5

• In an interview with The New Republic’s Greg Sargent, Wyden denounced Treasury’s 2/4 letter, saying that it “reeks of a cover up… It doesn’t pass the smell test.”

• According to Sargent, Wyden and his staff “are currently trying to establish whether DOGE is planning to load this coded data into outside servers to employ artificial intelligence on it, as reports have hinted is broadly being considered. Claiming that access to the data is ‘read-only’ doesn’t preclude this possibility.”

• Elez’s access to Treasury’s payments system was reportedly changed from “read- and code-writing privileges” to “read-only,” according to WIRED, which cited unnamed sources.

• If it’s true that Elez had “read-write” access from 2/1 to 2/5, then the Trump administration’s statements (e.g., by the White House on 2/3 and Treasury on 2/4) denying that anyone associated with Musk’s DOGE team had more than read-only access to the federal payments system were false. In addition, Bessent’s 2/3 claim that Musk’s team did “not have control” over Treasury’s payments system and his 2/6 claim that no DOGE agents ever had the ability to make changes would also be inaccurate. 

• During a 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.

• At the same hearing, 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.

• According to Krause, Bessent delegated the performance of duties of the Fiscal Assistant Secretary to him on February 5, though he had “not yet assumed those duties” as of February 9.

• All eight Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles demanding that she answer questions about the cyber and national security risks posed by giving DOGE agents access to classified materials. The lawmakers asked Wiles to provide answers by February 14.

• Bessent defended DOGE’s efforts at Treasury, telling Larry Kudlow during an interview on Fox Business Network that “our payment system is not being touched.” Bessent added: “There is a study being done—can we have more accountability, more accuracy, more traceability that the money is going where it is. But in terms of payments being stopped, that is happening upstream at the department level.”

February 6

• In response to the lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor and consumer groups, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order limiting DOGE’s access to Treasury’s payments system to read-only, and to Elez and Krause only. 

• Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) led 154 House Democrats in sending a letter to Bessent expressing concerns and demanding answers about Musk and his allies’ access to Treasury’s payments system. The lawmakers asked Bessent to provide answers by February 20.

• Bessent participated in an interview on Bloomberg TV. Some of Bessent’s answers—including his claims that nobody affiliated with DOGE has ever had the ability to make changes and that nobody at Treasury has attempted to block any payments—appear to contradict emerging evidence of the extent of Musk and his allies’ annexation of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. See our follow-up questions.

• Elez resigned following revelations of his racist and pro-eugenics tweets.

• The threat intelligence team at Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service recommended in a weekly email sent to the agency’s IT division and other staffers that “DOGE members be monitored as an ‘insider threat,’” WIRED reported.

• According to WIRED: “‘There is ongoing litigation, congressional legislation, and widespread protests relating to DOGE’s access to Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,’ reads a section of the email titled ‘Recommendations,’ reviewed by WIRED. ‘If DOGE members have any access to payment systems, we recommend suspending that access immediately and conducting a comprehensive review of all actions they may have taken on these systems.’” […] “‘There is reporting at other federal agencies indicating that DOGE members have performed unauthorized changes and locked civil servants out of the sensitive systems they gained access to,’ the ‘Recommendations’ portion of the email continues. ‘We further recommend that DOGE members be placed under insider threat monitoring and alerting after their access to payment systems is revoked. Continued access to any payment systems by DOGE members, even ‘read only,’ likely poses the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.’”

February 7

• Nineteen Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit accusing Trump and Bessent of violating federal law and the U.S. Constitution by giving Musk’s DOGE team access to Treasury’s payments system. The suit seeks to prohibit “political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department” from accessing federal payment data and requests that any such individuals who have gained access be required to return information they obtained.

• In response to Treasury’s 2/4 letter, Wyden wrote again to Bessent, highlighting numerous inconsistencies in the Trump administration’s story. Wyden demanded that Bessent “immediately clarify the terms under which Musk, Krause, and other individuals currently or previously affiliated with DOGE can or did access Treasury Department payment systems and clarify whether they seek this access to unlawfully freeze payment instructions given by Congress.” Wyden asked Bessent to provide answers by February 12.

• Musk posted a poll on X asking whether he should “bring back” Elez. Vice President JD Vance said that he should, to which Musk responded, “He will be brought back.” Elez’s employment status remains unclear.

• Trump once again praised Musk, saying that his billionaire henchman is doing a “very good job.” “Elon is doing a great job. He’s finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. You see it with the USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], but you’re going to see it even more so with other agencies and other parts of government,” Trump told reporters. 

• The president’s comments imply that Musk is actively combing through—or at least receiving intel about—federal payments data, and potentially stopping payments or flagging payments to stop. This undercuts the Trump administration’s claims (e.g., from the White House on 2/3, Treasury on 2/4, DOJ on 2/5, and Bessent on 2/5 and 2/6) that the only DOGE personnel with access to such information have been Krause and Elez, and on a “read-only” basis.

February 8

• In response to the lawsuit filed by 19 state attorneys general, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer temporarily restricted DOGE agents’ access to Treasury’s payments system. 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 to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded” from Treasury’s records and systems since January 20.

• Judge Engelmayer instructed DOJ attorneys representing Trump, Bessent, and the Treasury Department to appear at a February 14 hearing before U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who will be presiding over the case.

February 9

• DOJ attorneys representing Trump, Bessent, and the Treasury Department asked Judge Vargas to clarify, modify, or dissolve Judge Engelmayer’s February 8 order. In a court filing, the DOJ complained that Engelmayer’s order “could be read to cover all political leadership within Treasury—including even Secretary Bessent.” The DOJ called this “a remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch that is in direct conflict with Article II of the Constitution.”

• In an affidavit, Krause said that “no political appointees, [special government employees], or detailees at Treasury currently have access… to payment records, payment systems, and personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees.” According to Krause, he was “the sole such person that had any level of access to payment records or systems at the time the [temporary restraining order] was issued,” and he has since complied with the order’s restrictions.

• Krause said that his access to the federal payments system “prior to and at the time of the issuance of the [temporary restraining order] was limited to what is referred to as ‘over the shoulder’ access to view BFS payment data, payment systems, and copied source code that was being accessed by other Treasury employees with appropriate access to the data or systems.” He added: “I do not have, nor have I ever had, direct or personal access to BFS payment data, code, or systems and I currently do not have ‘over the shoulder’ access.”

• According to Krause: “Since January 20, 2025, one other Treasury non-career employee—Marko Elez—had access to BFS payment systems and payment data covered by the order. Mr. Elez resigned on February 6, 2025, and returned all Treasury and BFS equipment and credentials the same day. Treasury staff have quarantined and disabled access to all devices and accounts used by this individual. […] Based on technical controls in place, BFS oversight of Mr. Elez’s work, instructions provided to Mr. Elez regarding proper data handling, and subsequent technical review of his activities, I currently have no reason to believe Mr. Elez retains access to any BFS payment data, source code, or systems.”

February 10

• Judge McConnell accused the Trump administration of violating his January 31 order blocking OMB’s spending freeze and instructed the government “to immediately restore frozen funding.”

• Five former Treasury Secretaries published a New York Times op-ed expressing alarm about “the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy.”

February 11

• Judge Vargas kept Judge Engelmayer’s February 8 order restricting DOGE’s access to the federal payments system in place but “clarified that it did not apply to Bessent, other Senate-confirmed Treasury officials, or outside contractors who accessed the system before Trump’s January 20 inauguration to perform maintenance,” Reuters reported.

• In an affidavit, Joseph Gioeli III, deputy commissioner of transformation and modernization at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, said that it was discovered on February 6 that Elez’s access to the Secure Payment System (SPS), one part of Treasury’s payments system, had “mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions instead of read-only” on February 5. According to Gioeli, Elez’s 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 claimed that “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.” Regardless, his statement contradicts Bessent’s 2/6 claim that no DOGE agents ever had the ability to make changes.

• Gioeli also stated that the Bureau of the Fiscal Service provided Elez “with copies of the source code for PAM, SPS, and ASAP in a separate, secure coding environment known as a ‘secure code repository’ or ‘sandbox.’” According to Gioeli: “Elez could review and make changes locally to copies of the source code in the cordoned-off code repository; however, he did not have the authority or capability to publish any code changes to the production system or underlying test environments.” As journalist Nathan Tankus observed, this “provides an ‘innocuous’ explanation for reporting last week, including Josh Marshall’s early reporting at Talking Points Memo of ‘source code changes’” reportedly made by Elez.

• 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 “only one payment—a Feb. 10 disbursement to the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. government foreign aid agency—was affected by the review of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s systems. That payment was forwarded to the State Department, after which a representative of the Millennial Challenge Corporation asked the Treasury not to process it, according to Robinson’s affidavit.”

• Robinson’s statement contradicts Bessent’s 2/6 claim that Treasury had not blocked any payments amid DOGE’s so-called “review” of the system.

• In an affidavit, Krause said 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)

• In Tankus’ words, “The Krause statement is an admission, perhaps inadvertent, that they are pursuing using BFS systems to impound spending and they are going to rhetorically cover this by defining impounded spending as ‘improper payments.’” (emphasis in original)

February 12

• Warren, Wyden, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) sent a letter accusing Bessent of providing “inaccurate or incomplete information” about the degree of access that Musk’s DOGE team had to Treasury’s payments system, Bloomberg reported. “Despite Treasury’s denials, DOGE personnel had the ability to modify system coding and were planning to use the Treasury systems to help pause payments by other agencies,” the letter states. “You need to provide a clear, complete, and public accounting of who accessed the systems, what they were doing, and why they were doing it.” The lawmakers asked Bessent to respond by February 14.

• The Government Accountability Office notified Warren and Wyden that it had accepted their 2/4 request to launch an investigation into Bessent’s move to grant Musk’s DOGE affiliates access to Treasury’s payments system, Politico reported. “‘We plan to conduct one body of audit work and issue multiple reports, if needed,’ the GAO official wrote in the letter to lawmakers,” the outlet noted.

February 13

• Reuters reported that DOGE staffer Gavin Kliger “arrived at the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday to examine the agency’s operations, according to two people familiar with the matter.” It marked the first time that a DOGE agent has visited IRS’ Washington headquarters and came after senior executives at the agency “were instructed on Thursday to identify all ‘non-essential’ contracts for termination,” Reuters noted.

• In an email, “senior executives at the IRS were told that the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages most government contracts, is demanding they review consulting contracts under their purview and determine whether they can be justified,” Reuters reported. “The GSA deems a contract non-essential if it ‘merely generates a report, research, coaching, or an artifact,’ the email says. ‘Consistent with the goals and directives of the Trump administration to eliminate waste, reduce spending, and increase efficiency, GSA has taken the first steps in a government-wide initiative to eliminate non-essential consulting contracts,’ the email says.”

• The Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General opened an inquiry into DOGE’s access to the federal payments system. According to Politico, “Loren Sciurba, Treasury’s acting inspector general, said in a letter to lawmakers on Thursday that the watchdog had started an audit of the ‘adequacy of controls’ over sensitive payment systems over the past several months.” The IG will also evaluate “any allegations of improper or fraudulent payments” made by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the outlet reported.

• Dozens of USAID employees filed a lawsuit against Musk and DOGE “for unconstitutionally wielding extreme power in destroying agencies and accessing sensitive information, constituting a ‘government takeover,’” Democracy Docket reported.

• Democratic attorneys general in 14 states filed a lawsuit against Musk, DOGE, and Trump “to nullify the unconstitutional actions” of DOGE “and prevent them from performing any future actions like freezing federal funding, accessing agency data, and taking over agencies,” Democracy Docket reported. The case will be overseen by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, according to The New Republic.

February 14

• The Washington Post reported that “the Trump administration is expected to begin laying off thousands of employees at the Internal Revenue Service, six people briefed on the matter said, as billionaire Elon Musk’s team begins to target tax collections. […] The layoffs are likely targeting tax collection, several of the people briefed on the matter said. Indeed, associates of Musk’s team begin meeting high-ranking IRS officials about what could prove dramatic changes to the tax agency. Gavin Kliger, a software engineer now working at the IRS, met with Ken Corbin, the IRS’s chief of taxpayer services, and Heather Maloy, the agency’s top enforcement official, during his first day at the agency’s headquarters Thursday, according to several of the people familiar with the meetings.”

• Judge Vargas extended her order blocking Musk’s DOGE team from accessing Treasury’s payments system.