The Trump administration has given billionaire Elon Musk to access to the federal payment system which controls the flow of billions of dollars in public funds each year, report the American media.
The reports suggest that the secretary of the treasure entering Scott Bessent has granted access to members of the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government (DOGE) – which is not a government department, but an administration team – to personal information sensitive of millions of Americans.
The division manages the payments of nearly $ 6 billions for programs such as social security, pays government wages and distributes money allocated by the congress.
The White House and the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
Access to the payment system was granted on Friday, the same day when a longtime treasure manager appointed David Lebryk was put on administrative leave and suddenly retired, said New York Times.
The newspaper said that Mr. Lebryk had strongly resisted “Musk’s lieutenants in the ministry’s payment system, which sends money on behalf of the entire federal government”.
Musk, who is not officially an employee of the government, has received an extremely wide room for maneuver by President Donald Trump to reduce federal spending.
He helped to set up Doge to carry out this effort, bringing allies from his private companies and Silicon Valley to help the process.
Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive, is said to be among the team working at Treasury.
As a rule, only a handful of treasury employees work on the payment system.
“To put it frankly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated interference risks serious damage to our country and the economy,” wrote American senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of the Oregon, in a letter to Bessente.
“I fear that mismanagement of these payment systems can threaten full faith and the credit of the United States,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the federal workforce is struggling with the multiple decrees signed by Trump since his entry into office.
Employees received letters from the staff management office asking them to report their colleagues who try to “hide” diversity efforts, as well as an offer of resignation paid – an offer that many employees have losses with suspicion.
Agencies rushed to References to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as to transgender and LGBT persons of their websites to comply with decrees.
DEI programs (diversity, equity and inclusion) aim to promote participation in workplaces by people from environments.
Their donors deal with historical or continuous discrimination and the under-representation of certain groups, including racial minorities, but critics argue that these programs can themselves be discriminatory.
On Saturday, the website of the United States agency for international development, which distributes billions of aid worldwide, seemed to stop working.