The Trump administration has given billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies access to the federal payments system that controls the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds every year, US media report.
Reports suggest incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has granted access to members of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – which is not a government department, but a team within the administration – to sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.
The division handles payments of nearly $6 trillion for programmes like Social Security, pays government salaries, and distributes money allotted by Congress.
The White House and the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The access to the payment system was granted on Friday, the same day when a longtime Treasury official named David Lebryk was put on administrative leave and suddenly retired, the New York Times reported.
The newspaper said Mr Lebryk had strongly resisted allowing “Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government”.
Musk, who is not officially a government employee, has been given extremely broad leeway by President Donald Trump to slash federal spending.
He helped set up Doge in order to carry out this effort, bringing allies from his private companies and Silicon Valley to assist the process.
Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive, is reported to be among the team working at Treasury.
Typically, only a handful of Treasury employees work on the payments system.
“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,” US Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, wrote in a letter to Bessent.
“I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the federal workforce has been grappling with the multiple executive orders signed by Trump since taking office.
Employees have received letters from the Office of Personnel Management asking them to report their colleagues who are attempting to “disguise” diversity efforts, as well as an offer to take paid resignations — an offer many employees view with suspicion.
Agencies have scrambled to pull down references to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as transgender and LGBT individuals from their websites in order to comply with the executive orders.
DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programmes aim to promote participation in workplaces by people from a range of backgrounds.
Their backers say they address historical or ongoing discrimination and underrepresentation of certain groups, including racial minorities, but critics argue such programmes can themselves be discriminatory.
On Saturday, the website for the United States Agency for International Development, which distributes billions in aid around the world, appeared to stop working.
By BBC News
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