A recent court filing reveals that Marko Elez, a former member of the Treasury Department's Government Efficiency team (DOGE), briefly held inappropriate access to the Secure Payment System (SPS). Joseph Gioeli III, of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, stated in the filing that Elez was mistakenly granted "read/write" access instead of the intended "read-only" permissions.
This incident is connected to a legal case involving restrictions placed on President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent concerning access to sensitive Treasury systems. The restrictions limit who they can authorize to access systems containing personally identifiable and confidential financial information.
According to Gioeli, the access error was discovered on February 6th, prompting an immediate forensic investigation. However, the issue was swiftly rectified, with Elez's access changed to "read-only." Gioeli asserts that Elez likely remained unaware of the temporary elevated access and did not utilize it to modify any data within the SPS database. Forensic analysis is ongoing to confirm this.
Further court documents reveal that Thomas H. Krause, Jr. is currently the sole member of the Treasury DOGE team, coordinating with the U.S. DOGE Service (formerly the U.S. Digital Service) but not officially employed by them. Elez, a software engineer with experience at SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter), resigned from the Treasury DOGE team on February 6th.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported on Elez's connection to a deleted social media account containing racist remarks. Following his resignation, Vice President JD Vance expressed support for Elez's reinstatement, a sentiment echoed by Elon Musk, who leads the DOGE initiative aimed at combating government waste, fraud, and abuse.
