After Tech Geeks Built a Back Door to Loot Billions from FTX, Republicans Refuse to Investigate What Elon Musk’s Tech-Squad Did Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System

It was just two years ago that bold headlines were swirling around the world that young techies with degrees from top American universities had engineered one of the most brazen frauds in U.S. history

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

It was just two years ago that bold headlines were swirling around the world that young techies with degrees from top American universities had engineered one of the most brazen frauds in U.S. history, including building a backdoor to a computer system that allowed billions of dollars to be looted from customer accounts at crypto exchange FTX.

Despite this recent reminder that anyone with access to large sums of other people’s money requires constant and competent policing, President Donald Trump has allowed the insanely greedy Elon Musk to send young techies into the U.S. Treasury Department and access its $6 trillion payment systems. The tech news website, Wired, has provided in-depth coverage of insider allegations that one of those Musk techies, Marko Elez, was given administrative access, meaning that he could write and alter code in the Treasury payment system.

Last Tuesday, Wired reported the following:

“Despite reporting that suggests that Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force has access to these Treasury systems on a ‘read-only’ level, sources say Elez…has many administrator-level privileges. Typically, those admin privileges could give someone the power to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.

“ ‘You could do anything with these privileges,’ says one source with knowledge of the system, who adds that they cannot conceive of a reason that anyone would need them for purposes of simply hunting down fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo confirmed Wired’s reporting, adding alarming new details. Marshall wrote: “I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin-level access on Friday, January 31st. The claim of ‘read only’ access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.”

Despite this reporting, which also aired on major television news programs, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee quashed a demand from Democrats to subpoena Musk to testify before the Committee concerning the activities of his tech geek squad operating inside federal agencies.

Congressional Republicans, who are the majority party at present in both the House and Senate, appear to be so fearful of earning the wrath of Donald Trump that they are seemingly willing to let the U.S. Treasury payment system be potentially hacked rather than ask probing questions in a timely fashion.

This head in the sand attitude among Republican “lawmakers” forced 19 state Attorneys General to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday, asserting that people associated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were allowed “to access Americans’ personal and private information, including bank account and social security numbers.” The lawsuit sought to “halt improper access to this sensitive information while litigation proceeds.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta released this statement regarding the lawsuit:

“President Trump’s and the Treasury Department’s actions to allow DOGE access to Americans’ private information is chilling and unconstitutional — and Americans are paying attention. Millions entrust the federal government to carry out vital operations that people rely on every day. In doing so, we also entrust them with our sensitive and personal information. This week’s action is a breach of that trust and a gross and blatant power grab. The President does not hold the power to give Americans’ bank account and social security numbers to anyone he’d like. I am proud to stand with attorneys general around the country to demand the immediate halt to this violation of both trust and law.”

In addition to the California Attorney General, AGs from the following states signed on as plaintiffs: New York, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

You can read the full complaint here.

On Saturday, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction against further access by DOGE to Treasury payment systems and set a court hearing on the matter for this Friday.

The Judge’s action sent Elon Musk into a rage on X (Twitter), where he called for the Judge to be impeached.

Trump has regularly attempted to create the narrative that Elon Musk is a genius that the American people are fortunate to have working to eliminate fraud and waste in federal agencies under this Trump concoction called DOGE.

The unfortunate reality is that Musk is a serial grifter with a history of tawdry and illegal acts. Musk previously battled in court to obtain a $56 billion pay package at Tesla. (That’s billion not million.) Tesla is a publicly-traded company and Musk is its CEO – meaning that under law he owes an oath of loyalty to the company and its shareholders. Notwithstanding that law, Musk simultaneously serves as CEO of rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, and controls numerous other companies.

In January and February of last year, Musk was profiled in two shocking Wall Street Journal articles regarding his use of illegal drugs. The Wall Street Journal’s January 6, 2024 (paywall) article carried this assessment of Musk’s drug use:

“The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at private parties around the world, where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements or give up their phones to enter, according to people who have witnessed his drug use and others with knowledge of it. Musk has previously smoked marijuana in public and has said he has a prescription for the psychedelic-like ketamine.”

In October, five Wall Street Journal reporters dropped the bombshell news that Musk “has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.” In February of 2022, the U.S. placed Putin on a sanction list in response to his “unjustified, unprovoked, and premeditated invasion of Ukraine….”

Musk has also been the target of multiple cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission which allege that he violated federal securities laws at Tesla and Twitter (now called X). See here and here.

Despite this profile of an out-of-control, obscenely rich bully attempting to seize power, he and his techies continue to move into more federal agencies.

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