President Trump was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2025. The same day, he issued an executive order establishing a so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.” Under the executive order, the United States Digital Service was renamed the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and a “temporary organization” was established under 5 U.S.C. § 3161 entitled “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organizaton.”
The executive order directs the USDS Administrator to “work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.” It also directs agency heads to “take all necessary steps, in coordination with the USDS Administrator and to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” The executive order “displaces all prior executive orders and regulations, insofar as they are subject to direct presidential amendment, that might serve as a barrier to providing USDS access to agency records and systems as described above.”
Since his inauguration, President Trump has not formally identified the individual who would serve as USDS Administrator or the full list of individuals that are part of the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization.
During the presidential campaign, President Trump announced that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk would have a leadership role in DOGE. It is widely reported that, since the inauguration, Mr. Musk has played a leadership role in DOGE activities across the federal government.
The Trump administration has not publicly revealed whether Mr. Musk has been made an officer or employee of the U.S. government or remains a private citizen. The Trump administration also has not publicly revealed the employment status of other individuals who are part of DOGE.
Sometime after November 5, 2024, DOGE representatives reportedly approached officials in the Department seeking access to the agency’s payment systems. DOGE’s efforts to obtain access continued after President Trump’s inauguration.
Initially, DOGE’s requests for access to the Treasury’s payment systems were reportedly rebuffed by David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the agency and the individual who had been in charge of the Bureau. According to press reports, Mr. Lebryk advised DOGE representatives during the transition period that the information contained in the payment systems was proprietary and should not be shared outside of the government.
On January 27, 2025, the Senate confirmed Mr. Bessent as President Trump’s Treasury Secretary, and he was sworn in the following day. On information and belief, Secretary Bessent and his chief of staff Dan Katz had a meeting with Mr. Lebryk later that week, after which Mr. Lebryk was placed on administrative leave. On Friday, January 31, Mr. Lebryk announced that he was retiring from the Treasury after 35 years in federal service.
On information and belief, on Friday evening, January 31, defendant Bessent gave representatives of DOGE full access to the federal payment system. Senator Ron Wyden, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Finance, has reported that DOGE’s access to Treasury’s payment system is complete. He has stated that DOGE has “*full* access to this system. Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors…. All of it.”
Defendants have not released the full list of DOGE-affiliated individuals who have been provided access to the Treasury’s payment systems, or whether those individuals are employees of the Bureau, the Department, another agency, or a private enterprise. Tom Krause, the Chief Executive Officer of Cloud Software Group (according to that company’s website, see
https://www.cloud.com/leadership (Feb. 3, 2025)) is reported to be working at the Treasury Department. And Secretary Bessent has reportedly “signed off on a plan to give access to the payment system to a team led by” Mr. Krause, who is identified in the article as “a liaison to Musk’s DOGE group that operates out of” the USDS. Defendants have not publicly disclosed the members of Mr. Krause’s team or provided the details of the “plan” for access that Secretary Bessent reportedly signed off on. Although an anonymous source assured that “no one outside Treasury would have access” to the payment system, the source apparently did not indicate whether information contained in the payment system would be disseminated outside of the Bureau.
Mr. Musk has suggested that the DOGE team has the authority to control disbursements at the Bureau. In response to an allegation by General Mike Flynn (ret.) that certain federal grants to Lutheran Family Services and affiliated organizations should end, Mr. Musk responded on X (formerly Twitter) that “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”
