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Elon Musk has vowed to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government grants after apparently gaining access to review the US Treasury’s vast payments system, a move that prompted the sudden resignation of one of the department’s most senior officials.
The world’s richest man, who bankrolled Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and was tasked by the president with running the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, boasted on his social media site X that he was “rapidly shutting down . . . illegal payments” after a list of grants to Lutheran organisations was posted online.
The threat came after Musk appeared to confirm on Saturday that DOGE had access to the Treasury system, which disperses trillions of dollars each year, including social security payments.
He justified the move by claiming his team discovered “that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups”.
The system has been run by career civil servants and the Treasury already has an in-house team tasked with identifying fraudulent payments. A source with knowledge of the situation said that DOGE representatives did not have the authority to cut payments, only to read the data.
Senator Ron Wyden, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said his office had been told that Treasury secretary Scott Bessent had granted DOGE “full” access to the system.
“Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it,” he said.
He has written to Bessent demanding answers on Musk’s access, saying: “I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”
Musk’s comments came after David Lebryk, who had spent more than 36 years in government and had briefly run the Treasury while Bessent was awaiting confirmation, resigned abruptly on Friday. Lebryk was responsible for overseeing the operation of the department’s financial infrastructure.
The extent of DOGE’s access to the payments system appeared to be laid bare on Sunday by Musk, who responded to a post on X which contained a spreadsheet showing payments to a number of Lutheran charities.
The spreadsheet was posted by Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who was pardoned in 2020 after pleading guilty to lying about his contacts with Russians.
Flynn claimed that the screenshots showed “there are MANY more organisations cashing in on our hard-earned money”, adding: “These entities are receiving huge sums, which raises serious questions about how taxpayer funds are being spent and who’s benefiting.”
Musk responded saying “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments”. It is unclear whether the billionaire, who has yet to take an official role within government, would have the legal authority to do so.
Musk, the US Treasury, a spokesperson for Bessent and a spokesperson for DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
Additional reporting by James Politi and Alex Rogers in Washington