The Washington Post is reporting (gift link) that former acting U.S. Treasury Secretary David Lebryk has resigned after clashing with Elon Musk over access to the Treasury’s payment systems. According the the Post: “The Treasury payment system In the 2023 fiscal year, the payment systems processed nearly 1.3 billion payments, accounting for about $5.4 trillion...” This follows Musk’s takeover of the Office of Personnel Management (gift link to Post article), and his similar access to the General Services Administration (gift link to NYTimes article).
It was bad enough Musk emailing over 2 million federal career officials with a dubious and probably illegal resignation offer (he used the email address “hr@opm.gov” if that’s helpful). Now Musk’s presumably unvetted minions are trying to access the the details of the complete U.S. Treasury payment system. I don’t really know how to complain on this, but I can’t think of a scarier, more corrupt scenario. Please forward these links!
Below some block quotes from this latest Post article on Treasury payment access:
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
