--- title: "Elon Musk Just Pulled Something Unbelievably Sketchy at the US Treasury" description: "A senior Treasury Department official announced his resignation after being hounded by Elon Musk's DOGE allies." date: "2025-01-31" modified: "2025-01-31" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-sketchy-us-treasury" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "donald trump" - "elon musk" - "government" - "the digest" --- # Elon Musk Just Pulled Something Unbelievably Sketchy at the US Treasury ![A senior Treasury Department official announced his resignation after being hounded by Elon Musk's DOGE allies.]() *HALLE, GERMANY - JANUARY 25: Tech billionaire Elon Musk speaks live via a video transmission during the election campaign launch rally of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party on January 25, 2025 in Halle, Germany. Musk is an outspoken supporter of the AfD and is urging German voters to cast their ballots for the party. The AfD is currently in second place in polls ahead of federal parliamentary snap elections scheduled for February 23. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) \Image: Sean Gallup/Getty Images\* ## ​​Forbidden Treasure It looks like Elon Musk and his buddies have forced another US official out of government. The [*Washington Post* reports]() that senior Department of the Treasury official David Lebryk abruptly announced his retirement on Friday, after clashing with Musk's allies at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Lebryk has worked at the agency for decades. Since the election, according to the report, DOGE has hounded him for access to the Treasury's sensitive payment system, which is used to send out trillions of dollars every year and is normally accessed only by a small number of senior officials. Why Lebryk clashed over the requests is unclear. But maybe he just didn't like the idea of handing over the keys for a trillion-dollar money pipeline to Musk — a walking conflict of interest — and his retinue of [sketchy and underqualified ]()DOGE lackeys. ## Feds Will Roll Musk fueled Trump's election victory by promising to gut federal agencies and drastically slash government spending. In the process, he's made no secret of his intentions to punish his political foes. On the day of Trump's inauguration, the chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, Mike Whitaker, resigned. Musk had [openly called]() for Whitaker's resignation for months, because under his leadership, the FAA temporarily halted Musk's rocket launches at his company SpaceX [on several occasions]() over safety concerns, slapping on fines. Considering those interventions were usually in response to a rocket [exploding]() [somewhere](), you could say that the FAA was simply doing its job rather than trying to sabotage SpaceX, whose Starship rockets seem to have no problem blowing up on their own without any malicious influence. But maybe Musk isn't interested in the proper functioning of government — not when pesky regulators get in the way of his company's progress. ## Up to No Good Lebryk's departure is expected to be a shock to the Treasury's rank and file, according to *WaPo*. It's hard to say what Musk and DOGE's intentions are with accessing the Treasury's payment system, which is used to distribute everything from Social Security and Medicare benefits to the salaries of federal employees. A detail we hope won't prove relevant is that Musk got his start in developing a payment system, PayPal, and has strived to [integrate a money transferring service]() into his social media site X, in a bid to turn it into an "everything app." What's seems clear, however, is that the intentions are cynical. "Your whole job is to pay the bills as they're due," Mark Mazur, a former Treasury official who served during the Obama and Biden administrations, told *WaPo*. "It's never been used in a way to execute a partisan agenda... You have to really put bad intentions in place for that to be the case." **More on:** *[Trump Broke the Federal Email System and Government Employees Got Blasted With Astonishingly Vulgar Messages]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()