'DOGE-affiliated goons' accused of locking career civil servants out of key databases

Brett Wilkins
01 February
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk stands with President-elect Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024.

Reporting Friday that aides to Elon Musk—the billionaire backer of Republican President Donald Trump who runs the Department of Government Efficiency—locked career civil servants out of computer systems containing the personal data of millions of federal employees raised alarms among observers who said the move is consistent with the administration's efforts to assert authoritarian control over the federal government.

An unnamed official at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) toldReuters that "we have no visibility" into what Musk aides "are doing with the computer and data systems," and "that is creating great concern."

"There is no oversight," the official said, adding that "it creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."

The Reuters report came on the same day that The Washington Post reported that David Lebryk, who has worked in nonpolitical positions at the U.S. Treasury Department since the George H.W. Bush administration, will retire following "a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems."

As the Post noted:

Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses, and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions. The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate.

On Friday, the Trump administration ordered the General Services Administration to create a plan to slash 50% from the independent agency's budget, according to journalist Ken Klippenstein, who reported senior officials were left looking "shell-shocked'" by the directive.

Lebryk's announcement underscored what critics have warned is an aggressive push by Musk and other unelected Trump acolytes to sideline civil servants as part of an agenda in which MAGA sycophants are empowered to weaken government checks and balances and ensure total loyalty to the president, who has repeatedly flirted with authoritarianism.

In a Friday article highlighting Lebryk's announcement, Gizmodo's Matt Novak reported that "while it's not clear why [Department of Government Efficiency] wants access, experts are alarmed because there's basically no plausible explanation that doesn't involve tinkering with critical government functions by sidestepping Congress."

"Lebryk's departure is apparently related to the interference by DOGE-affiliated goons to access these payment systems," Novak asserted.

Common Dreamsreported earlier this week that Trump loyalists in the OPM and Office of Management and Budget associated with Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right takeover of the federal government—are leading a sweeping effort to purge career civil servants and replace them with officials who will do the president's bidding without question.

Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy, toldReuters Friday that "this makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk's inner circle at OPM to know what's going on."

Despite its name, DOGE is a presidential advisory committee, not a federal department—and critics including Novak have accused the billionaire Trump supporter of reaching "his tentacles into virtually every agency."

"Congress famously has the power of the purse," he wrote. "But it looks like DOGE is trying to snatch it."

Earlier this week, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, warned that Trump "is trying every trick he and his Project 2025 cronies can think of to circumvent established civil service protections so they can purge the civil service of experts and replace them with political loyalists."

"The victims here, as is always the case with Donald Trump, are the American people who will see government services and benefits allocated not by nonpartisan civil servants, but by partisan hacks," Connolly added.

Mark Mazur, who served in senior Treasury Department roles during the Obama and Biden administrations, told the Post Friday that the prospect of government officials using the federal payments system in service of personal political motives is without precedent.

"It's never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda," Mazur stressed. "You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case."

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