Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.

The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.

The system could give the Trump administration another mechanism to attempt to unilaterally restrict disbursement of money approved for specific purposes by Congress, a push that has faced legal roadblocks.

Mr. Musk, who has been given wide latitude by President Trump to find ways to slash government spending, has recently fixated on Treasury’s payment processes, criticizing the department in a social media post on Saturday for not rejecting more payments as fraudulent or improper.

The Musk allies who have been granted access to the payment system were made Treasury employees, passed government background checks and obtained the necessary security clearances, according to two people familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity to discuss internal arrangements. While their access was approved, the Musk representatives have yet to gain operational capabilities and no government payments have been blocked, the people said.

Mr. Musk’s initiative is intended to be part of a broader review of the payments system to allow improper payments to be scrutinized and is not an effort to arbitrarily block individual payments, the people familiar with the matter said. Career Treasury Department attorneys signed off on granting the access, they added, and any changes to the system would go through a review process and testing.