One of billionaire Elon Musk's allies has been installed as the head of the Treasury Department bureau that manages the nation's most powerful payment system after the tech mogul pushed out a career civil servant who previously held the role, according to sources.
Silicon Valley executive Tom Krause will become the financial assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, two sources with knowledge of the matter told the Washington Post, and replace 35-year veteran David Lebryk, who resigned after telling Krause his demand to stop payments on foreign aid was illegal and refused to comply.
The Musk ally now has control over the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which disburses more than $5 trillion in annual payments for Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds and thousands of other programs and agencies – all of which Musk demanded on social media should be unilaterally halted as illegal.
ALSO READ:'Driven to self-loathing': Inside the extremist website believed to 'groom' teen attackers
Another Trump ally, 25-year-old Marko Elez, left the bureau Thursday after the Wall Street Journal reported on his racist social media posts, although Musk and vice president J.D. Vance have both publicly expressed support for bringing him back.
"I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life," the vice president tweeted. "We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back."
Elez had access to the bureau's trove of highly sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers and birthdays linked to individual taxpayers, and Krause remains under a court order not to share any of that data with anyone outside the department amidst legal challenges to the DOGE team's role there.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has defended members of Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency working at the department, saying Krause and Elez had “read-only” access to the payments system and were not permitted to make any changes to the complicated computer system used to manage the payments, although sources have told reporters they had some "write" or "insert" privileges.
Trump officials have thus far sought to downplay the DOGE staffers’ work at the Treasury Department. One has insisted that Krause and Elez only had “read-only” access to the payments system — a measure also mandated by a federal court order.
“When you say the DOGE team, these are Treasury employees, two Treasury employees, one of whom I personally interviewed in his final round,” Bessent told Bloomberg.