On the second weekend of the fascist regime, Elon Musk was busy infiltrating agencies of the federal government, accessing classified computer systems and closing down the USAID offices, employees of which were told not to show up for work on Monday. He boasted that it was easy to do because most of the bureaucracy doesn’t work on the weekends.
The most dramatic part of this came on Sunday when representatives of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were initially prevented by two senior security officials (who were working on the weekend) from accessing USAID offices containing classified information that at least some of them did not have security clearance to access. The security officers were promptly put on administrative leave and shortly thereafter the USAID website was taken offline.
This followed another dramatic event on Friday when David Lebryk, a career civil servant who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury beginning in 1989, announced his retirement after being put on administrative leave. Lebryk became the acting U.S. Secretary of the Treasury on Inauguration Day, serving in that role until Scott Bessent was confirmed to the position on January 28th.
Beginning in 2014, Lebryk served as the Fiscal Assistant Secretary, the Treasury Department’s most senior career position. He was “responsible for developing policy and overseeing the financial infrastructure of the federal government, including payments, collections, debt financing, cash management, reporting and accounting, delinquent debt collection, and shared services.”
During the transition, he became concerned that Trump officials from Musk’s DOGE were seeking “source code information related to the nation’s payment system.” This escalated after the inauguration.
The inquiries into the Treasury Department’s payment processes have been led by the Musk allies Baris Akis and Tom Krause. Mr. Akis, a relative newcomer to Mr. Musk’s circle, is a venture capitalist who during the transition has focused on the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.
Last weekend, Mr. Krause, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group, again pressed Mr. Lebryk for access to the system, according to two people familiar with the request. Mr. Lebryk declined, the people said.
Mr. Akis and Mr. Krause did not respond to requests for comment.
After the request, Mr. Lebryk sought meetings with Mr. Bessent, the agency’s new secretary, and the Treasury Department’s new chief of staff, Dan Katz, to discuss the situation, according to the people familiar with the matter.
After meetings with Mr. Katz and Mr. Bessent, Mr. Lebryk was placed on administrative leave, two people said. Other career officials will oversee the payment processes after Mr. Lebryk’s departure.
Then, on Sunday, Reuters reported that “aides to Elon Musk charged with running the [Office of Personnel Management] have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.”
The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.
“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”
As an example of how well Musk’s shock troops are protecting government systems, the Futurism website reported:
Last night, an exploit in the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) new home-cooked email server seems to have made it possible for anyone with an email address to blast messages to vast numbers of federal employees.
As a result, over 13,000 employees with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found their inboxes bombarded with spam and messages from vulgar trolls. Some users signed the NOAA up for newsletters from entities like the Church of Scientology, or the Perfect Jean — “Welcome to Jean Perfection,” a screenshot reads. One particularly vulgar email offered pointers on Trump’s alleged performance at a sexual act. An “Important Weather Alert” warned that the next four years have a 99 percent chance of fecal showers. “Aren’t you tired of working for a complete c***?” asked one sender. A missive from a sender identified as “Craig” simply reads “yo.”
The American people need to be reminded that Elon Musk has not been elected. He has not been confirmed to any position by the U.S. Senate. I don’t think they want or trust him to have computer access to their most sensitive personal information, especially if he can’t take even the most basic precautions to protect the integrity of the systems he’s hacked.
But there’s a broader and more ominous threat here. The first involves the country’s creditworthiness. Remember, every time there’s a crisis over raising the debt ceiling, we’re reminded that a failure to pay our bills on time could result in the world losing faith in the security of investing in U.S. treasury bonds, and if that happens it could result in global recession, or even depression. Now that Musk is in control of the payments system, he could unilaterally make a decision not to pay certain bills, which would have the same effect as running out of money to pay them.
The second ominous threat is that Musk now has the power to defy Congress’s direction about how appropriated monies are spent. The first thing we read in the U.S. Constitution (it’s literally Article 1, Section 1) is that “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Article 1, Section 8 says “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; [and] To borrow Money on the credit of the United States.”
While they’ve delegated the execution of some of these responsibilities to the Treasury Department, that doesn’t mean their will can be legally defied by some unelected, unconfirmed billionaire from South Africa. The Congress certainly hasn’t authorized Musk to quit payments on $4 billion dollars a day or to make any spending decisions whatsoever.
Setting aside the gross incompetence and obvious national cybersecurity threats, much of what Musk and his minions have already done is probably illegal. What they’re intending to do certainly is, although probably not for President Trump because the Supreme Court has ruled that he’s virtually incapable of committing a crime so long as he can argue it was done as part of his official duties. For Trump, the only remedy is conviction in an impeachment trial, which seems like a very remote possibility. And he can pardon Musk and his shock troops, and has shown a willingness to pardon even those convicted of seditious conspiracy.
These things will continue until the fascist regime is defeated.
