Donald Trump's aides are fully supportive of Elon Musk's efforts to drastically cut government spending, but his decisions have generated some stress because he often moves forward without giving the president a heads up, according to a new report.
Sources familiar with the dynamic told Bloomberg that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and the White House counsel's office have been tasked with overseeing the tech billionaire's work, while other top Trump aides have tried to avoid the problems Musk has created for Senate-confirmed Cabinet officials.
“Everyone is working as a team, led by President Trump and his highly respected Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and any speculation otherwise is pure fantasy pushed by people who have nothing better to do with their lives,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in an on-the-record description of the dynamic.
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Sources close to the president say he's pleased so far with the tumult Musk has created across the federal government, even if Trump has had to occasionally remind the South Africa-born tech mogul that he is the president.
“Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go,” Trump said this week about his billionaire benefactor. “But I think he’s doing a great job.”
Musk has installed his associates in key roles in agencies across the government, and former Trump officials said the tech mogul will come out ahead no matter how long he lasts as the president's leading adviser.
"By the time Trump tires of Musk, which most Trump advisers see as inevitable, the magnate will have enough information and access to the government to no longer need his compact with the president," Bloomberg reported. "Musk’s rapid-fire moves to peel back financial data and payment systems could be invaluable in the long run, the people said, as it could shed light on pricing and payment data from Boeing Co., with which Musk’s SpaceX has competed for launch business, or tax information for automakers competing with Tesla."
Justice Department attorneys agreed Wednesday night to temporarily restrict staffers linked to the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing information inside the Treasury Department's massive payment and collections system, including its trove of highly sensitive personal data for millions of individual Americans and businesses, in response to a lawsuit brought by a group of union members and retirees.
"The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service," the proposed order says.
However, the order carves out exceptions for two Musk-aligned special government employees, Tom Krause and Marko Elez, who remain authorized to access the system's payment records on a "read only" basis, but a source familiar with the situation told researcher Nathan Tankus at his Notes on the Crises website that arrangement was highly unusual and dangerous.
"Again, it's a distinction that doesn't matter too much to me," that source told Tankus. "He shouldn't have access to this almost 5 trillion dollar payment flow, even if it's 'read-only.' He shouldn't even be at Fiscal Service. None of this should be happening and it's only going to get worse the longer 'DOGE' is here and the more they learn about what they can do and get away with."
The 25-year-old Elez, who's previously worked for two Musk companies but has no government experience, might still be permitted to make changes to Secure Payment System (SPS), a source familiar with the situation told Tankus.
"A source familiar with the situation knows for a fact that Marko Elez’s access was set to 'insert' for the Secure Payment System (SPS), which is distinct from 'alter,'" the researcher reported. "According to a source unfamiliar with the situation this type of permission lets you 'add a row to a table' which is a 'type of write access but very limited.' According to my source who is unfamiliar with the situation it lets you 'create data but not change its structure or delete it, create tables etc.'"
None of his sources could confirm what level of access Musk has to the system through his allies, but Tankus said it's possible that Elez has gained enough clearance to break into the system and restore his full "read and write" privileges or carry out other types of mischief with some of the nation's most sensitive data.
"What can be done with this ['insert'] permission?" Tankus wrote. "By definition, my source unfamiliar with the situation can’t say. My unfamiliar source points out that 'a lot of that also does depend on the structure of the overall system, inserting things into tables could certainly do things like stop payments!' Of course, this source is simply speculating. The only way to know for sure is to hear from a current COBOL programmer working on PAM, SPS or another highly sensitive system which makes sure trillions of dollars of Treasury payments go out each year."
