Washington Post: Senior U.S. official exits after rift with Musk allies over payment system (January 31, 2025)

Summary

Washington Post article by Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf and Jacqueline Alemany, updated January 31, 2025, reporting that David A. Lebryk, a top Treasury career staffer, left the agency after a clash with allies of Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. It says Lebryk announced a retirement on Friday in an email to colleagues and that President Donald Trump named Lebryk acting secretary. It says officials affiliated with Musk's Department of Government Efficiency had been asking for access to the system, and that Tom Krause is among those involved, according to the people. It says the payment systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually.

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Senior U.S. official exits after rift with Musk allies over payment system

A top Treasury career staffer, David A. Lebryk, announced his retirement. Surrogates of Musk’s DOGE effort had sought access to sensitive payment systems.

Updated

January 31, 2025 at 8:34 p.m. EST 44 minutes ago

5 min

David A. Lebryk, seen in 2023, had served in nonpolitical roles over several decades at the Treasury Department. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

By Jeff Stein

,

Isaac Arnsdorf

and

Jacqueline Alemany

Jeff Stein covers economic policy at the White House, the Treasury Department, the Office of Management and Budget and across the administration. Reac ... more

Jeff Stein covers economic policy at the White House, the Treasury Department, the Office ... more

The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department left the agency after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades , announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues that was obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration. Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive who has now been detailed to Treasury, is among those involved, the people said. Krause did not respond to requests for comment.

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A spokeswoman for DOGE declined to comment. Lebryk could not be reached for comment.

When Scott Bessent was confirmed as treasury secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be the acting agency head. Trump administration officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave before he announced he would step down, two of the people said.

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Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. 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.

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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. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting the GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.

The executive order Trump signed creating DOGE also instructed all agencies to ensure it has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which would appear to include the Treasury payment systems.

It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts.

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On Monday, the White House Office of Management and Budget ordered a freeze on all federal grant spending — an order it rescinded two days later amid intense political backlash and lawsuits over the consequences of that decision.

Musk has characterized the rising national debt as an existential threat to the country and has proved willing to break norms in service of sweeping change.

Still, the possibility that government officials might try to use the federal payments system — which essentially functions as the nation’s checkbook — to enact a political agenda is unprecedented, said Mark Mazur, who served in senior Treasury Department roles during the Obama and Biden administrations.

“This is a mechanical job — they pay Social Security benefits, they pay vendors, whatever. It’s not one where there’s a role for nonmechanical things, at least from the career standpoint. Your whole job is to pay the bills as they’re due,” Mazur said. “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.”

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In the 2023 fiscal year, the payment systems processed nearly 1.3 billion payments, accounting for about $5.4 trillion, nearly 97 percent made electronically, according to the Treasury Department . Every payment was made on time.

Lebryk’s departure is expected to be a shock to Treasury personnel, among whom he enjoys a sterling reputation. The lifelong bureaucrat joined the department as an intern in 1989 and spent three decades at the agency under 11 treasury secretaries, serving as acting director of the U.S. Mint and commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, among other roles.

In his email announcing his retirement, Lebryk praised the department’s staff.

“Please know that your work makes a difference and is so very important to the country. It has been an honor to work alongside you,” he wrote. “Our work may be unknown to most of the public, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t exceptionally important.”

Michael Faulkender, whom Trump nominated as deputy treasury secretary in December, praised Lebryk’s work in 2023.

“I could not, to this day, tell you his politics,” Faulkender, who served as an assistant secretary at Treasury during Trump’s first term, told The Washington Post at the time. “He always seemed to be relaxed and under control.”

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