Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System

The New York Times ^ | Feb. 1, 2025 Updated 5:03 PM ET | Andrew Duehren, Maggie Haberman, Theodore Schleifer and Alan Rappeport

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to three people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.

The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.

The system could give the Trump administration another mechanism to attempt to unilaterally restrict disbursement of money approved for specific purposes by Congress, a push that has faced legal roadblocks.

Mr. Musk, who has been given wide latitude by President Trump to find ways to slash government spending, has recently fixated on Treasury’s payment processes, criticizing the department in a social media post on Saturday for not rejecting more payments as fraudulent or improper.

It is not clear whether the team led by Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has blocked any payments since gaining access to the system.

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is not a government department, but a team within the administration. It was put together at Mr. Trump’s direction by Mr. Musk to fan out across federal agencies seeking ways to cut spending, reduce the size of the federal work force and bring more efficiency to the bureaucracy. Most of those working on the initiative were recruited by Mr. Musk and his aides.

Similar DOGE teams have begun demanding access to data and systems at other federal agencies, but...

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Look at my posting history going back years.

You’re just projecting your own tribal prejudices. You have zero facts backing up any of your opinions. Just your own assumptions and whatever you’ve been brainwashed into believing by professional liars like Tucker Carlson or Elon Musk.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

You’re just projecting your own tribal prejudices.

Tells other people they're projecting while projecting.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

“tells other people”

Again, you can go back years in my posting history. Who was one of the first and loudest Trump supporters on this forum?

Me.

Who got harassed and insulted and attacked through hundreds of posts for criticizing Ted Cruz and pointing out that he was lying about his immigration record?

Me. I’m sure those old threads I started can still be found with all that hate I got.

Hell, I even supported Herman Cain back when! My prior account was RaisingCain (I think that’s the name), still active, not a banned profile. And I got insulted back then too just for giving my opinion on poor old Herman. I also bitterly opposed Mitt Romney, since I knew he would lose because he was a pathological liar.

I was posting when Putinists were a minority and were trying to claim SU-34s or whatever, a ground attack jet, was responsible for shooting down that airliner while Russian trolls and the one or two Putinists were editing/citing Wikipedia to raise its altitude range by thousands of feet just to make it possible.

I was posting when Putinists were a minority and claiming, in 2014, that they weren’t invading Ukraine, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And were trying to claim, while you could watch on video lines of Russian soldiers voting, that the voting going on was totally legit. Or that it was free and fair, despite zero people on the streets participating, and instead CCTV camera video of that lone Crimean Tatar who protested and was dragged off by soldiers and later found tortured to death and with a knife stuck through his eye.

Where were you?

Back then the old lies were: “Russia hasn’t invaded at all, all these 30,000 troops seen crossing the border are in your imagination, and actually these are home grown people trying to liberate themselves from evil Ukrainians!” Now Russia admits those were all lies, but expects you to believe the newest ones, by citing boogiemen like Obama and Obama era staff, even though Obama did nothing to help Ukraine and loudly mocked Mitt Romney for saying Russia was our number one enemy.

What were you doing during all of this? Do you remember any of my posts? I remember plenty of my opponents, who were just one or two weirdos at the time. Back then the forum was way more rational and reasonable. We had our heated discussions, called each other names, but we debated. We posted information. That’s gone now.