Treasury says Musk’s DOGE has not rejected payments in first attempt to clarify access granted to critical system
CNN
The Treasury Department said Elon Musk aides detailed to the agency have “read-only” access to its sensitive $5 trillion US payments system and that no payments have been suspended or rejected as part of an ongoing review.
The Treasury Department said Elon Musk aides detailed to the agency have “read-only” access to its sensitive $5 trillion US payments system and that no payments have been suspended or rejected as part of an ongoing review. The information, provided in a letter to lawmakers from a Treasury official, amounts to the first substantive effort to detail the role Department of Government Efficiency staff detailed to the agency have in the operations of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Efforts to gain access to the systems, which are closely held and the lynchpin of federal government payments, have rattled career Treasury officials and raised significant concern among lawmakers and former government officials in recent days, as CNN has reported. “The ongoing review of Treasury’s systems is not resulting in the suspension or rejection of any payment instructions submitted to Treasury by other federal agencies across the government,” an unnamed official said in the Tuesday evening letter. “In particular, the review at the Fiscal Service has not caused payments for obligations such as Social Security and Medicare to be delayed or re-routed.” The letter marks Treasury’s first public acknowledgment and explanation of the role held by Tom Krause, the chief executive officer at Cloud Software Group with ties to DOGE. Krause was described in recent weeks as the central DOGE-connected staffer driving the effort to secure access to the payment systems. Krause clashed with career officials over the request and was eventually granted access by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Krause is now a Treasury Department employee with “read-only access to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems in order to continue this operational efficiency assessment,” the letter states.
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