What Was Elon Musk’s Team Really Up To At Treasury?
INSIDE: Pam Bondi ... Emil Bove ... Ed Martin
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Editor’s Note
Hello to all of the new Morning Memo readers. Since Trump’s second inaugural, a surge of about 1,500 new people have signed up to receive Morning Memo via email. Welcome!
A quick note on what Morning Memo is and is not. It doesn’t seek to be comprehensive but rather essential: It won’t waste your time with fluff or sensationalize. It’s a carefully curated selection of the day’s news with some long-running threads on particular areas of interest. It stays abreast of the news, but tries not to lose the big picture in the flurry of daily headlines.
That said, the Morning Memo you’ve seen over the past three weeks or so as been a little different than usual simply because there has been so … much … essential … news. It’s been hard to cram it all in and not lose the thread in this chaotic, unprecedented time. I suspect that the current intensity level will eventually subside somewhat and Morning Memo will return to being a little more digestible so that you walk away feeling like you’ve done your duty to be a well-informed citizen without losing yourself to doom-scrolling.
Is A Federal Judge Getting The Whole Story On Musk?
A lot of new reporting this morning on what Elon Musk’s team has been up to at Treasury. The substance of it matters for what are obvious reasons, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But there’s important new context in which this is happening: The Justice Department is making representations in court to a federal judge in DC about what has and had not occurred at Treasury, and the judge is relying on those representations to issue a temporary restraining order to try to lock in the previous status quo.
It is not at all clear that what DOJ is telling the judge is accurate or complete. Whether that’s because the judge hasn’t asked the right questions or the Justice Department lawyers haven’t been given complete information from Treasury or everyone is operating from a deficiency of technical knowledge, there are plausible explanations that stop well short of outright lying or deceit. But whether it’s bad information or nefariousness, the stakes are a lot higher with an active court case on the matter pending.
Much of the confusion comes down to Treasury’s repeated claim that Musk team members designated as “special employees” have only had “read-only” access to sensitive payment systems. Without getting into technical details that are over my head, it seems increasingly likely that to whatever extent that is true, it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story.
As Wired and TPM have reported, the Muskovites have been working on changing the underlying code that the payments systems run on. The most important new overnight reporting comes from the NYT, which says that the reason Musk’s team wanted to get access to the Treasury payment system in the first place was to cut off USAID payments at the source:
But emails reviewed by The New York Times show that the Treasury’s chief of staff originally pushed for Tom Krause, a software executive affiliated with Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to receive access to the closely held payment system so that the Treasury could freeze U.S. Agency for International Development payments. …
The emails viewed by The Times undercut the Treasury’s explanation for why Mr. Krause and his team were given access to the payment system last week.
A reasonable read of the judge’s TRO is that it’s mostly targeted at limiting access to the database that contains records of the payments and sensitive payee information. It’s not clear that it would keep Musk’s flunkies from blocking payments, rewriting code, or meddling with the payment system while still being limited to “read-only access.”
What’s Musk Up To At OPM?
New from the WaPo:
Agents of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have gained access to highly restricted government records on millions of federal employees — including Treasury and State Department officials in sensitive security positions — as part of a broader effort to wrest control over the government’s main personnel agency, according to four U.S. officials with knowledge of the developments.
Other New Developments On The Musk Takeover
The Guardian goes inside the USAID standoff on the night the DOGE team tried to infiltrate secure spaces holding sensitive and classified data.
The DOGE team has gotten access to key payment and contracting systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the WSJ reports.
The DOGE team has arrived at the Labor Department and CDC.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is trying to establish whether DOGE is planning to load the sensitive Treasury payment data onto outside servers to employ artificial intelligence on it, Greg Sargent reports.
Musk et al. have zeroed in on the obscure Technology Transformation Services section of the General Services Administration, the WaPo reports.
Bondi Gets Right To Work Weaponizing DOJ
In a blizzard of some 14 memos, newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi set the Justice Department on a perilous new course. Among the most directives:
investigate former Special Counsel Jack Smith;
de-emphasize FARA enforcement; and
serve President Trump as “his lawyers,” a devastating blow to DOJ independence and its prior historic role.
Inside The FBI’s Standoff With DOJ
WSJ: How Trump’s Sweeping Expulsions Have Thrown the FBI Into Chaos
Fox News: Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove accused Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll of “insubordination.”
READ: Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove memo ordering the FBI purge
Only The Best
Acting DC U.S. Attorney Ed Martin is a piece of work:
It’s No Better On The National Security Side
CIA: In a “counterintelligence disaster,” the White House ordered the CIA to send via unclassified email a list of all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years, the NYT reports.
Army: In response to the anti-DEI executive order, West Point has banned existing student clubs at the service academy with any whiff of ethnic or cultural affinity.
Coast Guard: Reportedly on orders from President Trump, fired Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan was evicted from her home Tuesday on three-hours notice and forced to leave her personal belongings behind, NBC News reports.
Judge Blocks Birthright Citizenship Executive Order
In an opinion issued late yesterday, a federal judge in Maryland has blocked President Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order nationwide. For more context, Marty Lederman examines the most indefensible aspects of the government’s position in the case.
Trump Essentially Makes It Illegal To Be Trans
The degree to which transgender Americans are not just being vilified and stripped of legal status and protection but denied the ability to even exist makes it perhaps the most egregious attack on civil rights we’ve yet witnessed. The trans attacks are coming on so many fronts that it’s hard to keep track, but with Trump’s new executive order banning trans women from sports, here are two decent overviews:
WSJ: Trump’s Lightning-Speed Rollback of Transgender Rights Sparks Lawsuits
WaPo: Trump’s new ban on athletes is latest attack on transgender policies
For more granular day-to-day coverage of the legal landscape for trans rights, Chris Geidner at Law Dork is an experienced and indispensable reporter.
Quote Of The Day
“Today, right now, right here, is the easiest moment to draw the line against Donald Trump. Every day from here, it will get harder — the politics more inevitable, the destruction more irreversible, the sheer waste more costly, the downstream impacts on American life and the world beyond more catastrophic. The challenge is that fact has also been true every day for the last nine years.”–Garrett Graff
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Dems can’t go back to business as usual thinking with this admin. They most actively challenge everything.
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