CNN —
The Treasury Department said Elon Musk aides detailed to the agency have “read-only” access to its sensitive $5 trillion US payments system and that no payments have been suspended or rejected as part of an ongoing review.
The information, provided in a letter to lawmakers from a Treasury official, amounts to the first substantive effort to detail the role Department of Government Efficiency staff detailed to the agency have in the operations of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
Efforts to gain access to the systems, which are closely held and the lynchpin of federal government payments, have rattled career Treasury officials and raised significant concern among lawmakers and former government officials in recent days, as CNN has reported.
“The ongoing review of Treasury’s systems is not resulting in the suspension or rejection of any payment instructions submitted to Treasury by other federal agencies across the government,” an unnamed official said in the Tuesday evening letter. “In particular, the review at the Fiscal Service has not caused payments for obligations such as Social Security and Medicare to be delayed or re-routed.”
The letter marks Treasury’s first public acknowledgment and explanation of the role held by Tom Krause, the chief executive officer at Cloud Software Group with ties to DOGE. Krause was described in recent weeks as the central DOGE-connected staffer driving the effort to secure access to the payment systems. Krause clashed with career officials over the request and was eventually granted access by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Krause is now a Treasury Department employee with “read-only access to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems in order to continue this operational efficiency assessment,” the letter states.
The actions of Krause and other DOGE representatives sparked widespread concern among career officials, who were puzzled by the intensifying requests for access to detailed payment systems data and code. David Lebryk – the career civil servant who led the bureau and served as acting secretary while Bessent awaited Senate confirmation – was placed on administrative leave before departing the agency after resisting the DOGE team requests.
Bessent, after his confirmation and Lebryk’s departure, granted access to Krause and his associates, people familiar with the matter said.
But Treasury has said nothing publicly about the behind-the-scenes struggle – or the scale of the access DOGE associates were granted – and lawmakers were left in the dark about what was happening. At the same time, Musk claimed on his social media platform X that his team was canceling payments.
The Treasury official said Krause is conducting the review of the payment systems, which cover 90% of all federal payments totaling 1.2 billion transactions per year, with “veteran career Treasury officials, and all operational processes continue to be conducted only by career Treasury staff in accordance with all standard security, safety and privacy standards.”
The letter also confirms Krause has joined Treasury as a “special government employee” – the same designation that applies to Musk – which means he can only work for the government for 130 days or fewer over the next year.
“This role involves a hiring process that includes a review of a candidate’s credentials and background, and demands the same ethical standards of privacy, confidentiality, conflicts of interest assessment, and professionalism of other government employees. These assessments are conducted by career legal and ethics officials,” the letter states. “Mr. Krause is subject to the same security obligations and ethical requirements, including a Top Secret security clearance.”