World's richest man's takeover of U.S. Treasury is a coup [View all]

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Lindsay Owens @owenslindsay1 3h
This is an excellent summary of Musk’s takeover of the Treasury from @NYMag’s @chasdanner, with quotes from WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and my op-ed from @MSNBC yesterday.

But this quote from @smotus is right on the money. This isn’t efficiency. It’s a coup.





from Intelligencer:

The world’s richest man may now have access to the confidential personal information of every taxpayer in the United States. According to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday granted Elon Musk and his minions at the faux-agency DOGE full access to the Treasury’s massive federal payment system. As with the rest of Musk’s wide-reaching project within the U.S. government under Donald Trump, it’s not at all clear what he plans to do with this unprecedented access.

Also on Friday, the top civil servant at the Treasury Department, David Lebryk, was apparently ousted after he refused to give Department of Government Efficiency officials access to the system — or rather, per the Times, he “was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.”

Per a source who spoke with CNN:

According to one person familiar with the department, Trump-affiliated employees had previously asked about Treasury’s ability to stop payments. But Lebryk’s pushback was, “We don’t do that,” the person said. “They seem to want Treasury to be the chokepoint on payments, and that’s unprecedented,” the person added, emphasizing that it is not the bureau’s role to decide which payments to make — it is “just to make the f-ing payments.”

Adds the Washington Post:

Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

And as the Journal highlights:

Any interruption in its operation could result in far-reaching economic disruption. During negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, concerns about the continued performance of the payment system are at the core of the anxiety on Wall Street and in Washington.

Lindsay Owens, notes some troubling possibilities in an MSNBC op-ed:

First, accessing the Treasury’s payment system could be a path to freezing government funding, as the administration attempted earlier this week. Musk could halt payments to programs like Medicaid, Meals on Wheels, Head Start and more, maneuvering around the courts. Musk has already directed his engineers to find ways to turn off the flow of money to programs he and President Donald Trump oppose. With the keys to the Treasury’s payment system, he can unilaterally cut off these funds right at the source.

Musk could also get his hands on the “Do Not Pay” system that lists individuals or contractors the government has blacklisted, theoretically granting him control over whom the government does business with. Government contracts have been central to Musk’s $400 billion net worth; his companies have signed billions of dollars’ worth of government contracts. He could easily place his rivals on the Do Not Pay list or turn the spigot back on for friends who have been blacklisted.

Political scientist Seth Masket is sounding the alarm, as well:

There are many disturbing aspects of this. But perhaps the most fundamental is that Elon Musk is not a federal employee, nor has he been appointed by the President nor approved by the Senate to have any leadership role in government. The “Department of Government Efficiency,” announced by Trump in a January 20th executive order, is not truly any sort of government department or agency, and even the executive order uses quotes in the title. It’s perfectly fine to have a marketing gimmick like this, but DOGE does not have power over established government agencies, and Musk has no role in government. It does not matter that he is an ally of the President. Musk is a private citizen taking control of established government offices. That is not efficiency; that is a coup.