Senate Democrats are calling for an independent investigation into whether U.S. Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent violated federal law by granting Elon Musk, head of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and others access to the federal government’s payment systems.
Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) submitted a letter expressing their concerns to Deputy Treasury Inspector General Loren Sciurba and Acting Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Heather Hill.
“No individual can effectively and objectively police themselves, and it would be irresponsible of the department to allow any individual access to these critical systems without proper oversight,” the senators asserted in the letter. “Given the threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data posed by Mr. Musk and his team’s reported access to critical federal payment systems … we request that you use your authorities to investigate this matter further.”
The letter described the level of systems access provided to Musk’s team described in some reports as “troubling,” “unprecedented” and “potentially illegal.”
“These critical systems handle virtually every payment made by the federal government and contain highly sensitive personal and financial information about tens of millions of Americans,” the senators wrote. “This information is protected by law, and – until this past week – only a small group of career agency employees could access it.”
The lawmakers indicated the Treasury Department’s response to questions posed about facts cited in the reports only exacerbated their concerns and “raised more questions than it answered.”
“For example, the department asserted that ‘[c]urrently’ a set of Treasury staff members ‘working with Tom Krause . . . will have read-only access to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems,’” the senators wrote. “It provided no information about whether access had previously been extended to anyone beyond Treasury employees, such as individuals working for Elon Musk and DOGE.”
The Treasury Department’s response also did not include information about whether Krause, Musk or their respective team members obtained anything beyond “read-only” access to sensitive information before becoming federal employees. Additionally, the senators took issue with the department’s failure to explain when Krause and his team became employees, and whether they were hired as career civil servants or in some other capacity.
Contradictions between the department’s public explanations of its actions in question and messages conveyed through internal government emails obtained by the New York Times “cast doubt on the accuracy of its disclosures,” according to the lawmakers.
“In light of these conflicting accounts, we ask that you conduct an independent investigation into the facts underlying the concerning public reports. It is critically important to understand what systems were involved, who granted access to them, what type of access was permitted, exactly who gained the ability to get into the systems, and the reason they were allowed to access such sensitive information,” the senators wrote. “We also ask that you determine whether this unprecedented access represents a threat to the economy and our national security, given this system’s role in preventing the federal government from defaulting on the federal debt, and whether Secretary Bessent or anyone else in the department has violated any laws, regulations, or policies that govern conflicts of interest or protect the confidentiality and handling of sensitive personal information.”
Warren wrote to Bessent separately, demanding he provide “straight answers to basic questions about the integrity of the Department of the Treasury’s payment systems” with respect to the agency’s protocols for granting access to citizens’ sensitive information stored on government systems.