But if this letter is genuinely designed to address public alarm about these arrangements, it fails pretty miserably. In fact, the letter’s sheer evasiveness makes this scandal look worse. The letter has been dutifully noted by news reports, but it’s worth a closer read, because it illustrates the range of questions that the administration will not answer about Musk’s arrangements.
The top-line claim in Treasury’s letter—which is a response to a January 31 letter from Wyden posing questions about Musk—is that this access is “read-only.” It says that a tech executive named Tom Krause—a member of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—has this “read-only access” to “coded data” of Treasury’s payment systems, to undertake a review of the systems to enhance their efficiency and integrity.
In other words, Musk’s access merely expands on a process begun under President Biden, and contrary to critics’ fears, it isn’t empowering Musk or his team to go rogue inside the agency or turn off any congressionally authorized government payments at will.
Underscoring the point, Wyden said that his office has questioned former Treasury officials who are unaware of any previous Biden-era process that could be construed as the precursor to what we’re seeing now.
Also unanswered in Treasury’s letter: What sort of access does Musk have to these data and systems via Krause? The White House has declared that Musk is also a Special Government Employee. Does Musk have access to this data and these systems, and can he issue directives with regard to them via Krause—who again is part of DOGE—or not? Does Krause have the authority to override those career officials as part of this process?
“If they were really continuing a routine audit of the payment system without political interference,” Wyden asked, “why did the nonpartisan official who managed the system for years get forced out when Musk’s hatchet brigade showed up?”
It’s also worth looking at the questions in Wyden’s January 31 letter that are not answered in Treasury’s response: Why did Treasury grant DOGE officials access to its payment systems? What’s the legal authority for granting this to DOGE officials in particular? Who are the full range of officials on DOGE that have access to them? Has Treasury vetted whether DOGE’s access—and Musk’s access—raises conflicts of interest, given Musk’s extensive business holdings, particularly in China?
The sheer speed and scope of the Trump-Musk blitzkrieg can easily seduce us into believing that they’re politically invincible, that the president—and Republicans who are eagerly embracing all of it—will never pay a political price for any of this lawlessness.
Musk is plainly a political vulnerability for Trump. As William Kristol notes at The Bulwark, recent polling shows not just majority public disapproval of Musk but also that the minority who approves of him continues to shrink. And a new poll from the progressive Data for Progress shows a slim majority is receptive to a message emphasizing how Musk’s encroachments enhance his capacity for corrupt self-enrichment, while only a small minority see his business smarts as a benefit to taxpayers. Perhaps voters are not easily hypnotized by pro-Musk hagiography painting his tech wizardry as an asset the rest of us are lucky to benefit from, especially when the reality of his autocratic and lawless power grabs is spelled out for them.
As this Treasury Department letter suggests, Trump and the White House don’t have easy answers to help them spin away what we’re all seeing unfold right before our eyes. Memo to large-D and small-d democrats alike: Keep hammering away at all these mounting questions, and don’t let up.
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