Week Three: Musk’s Engineers Take Over

It's a Musk-engineered takeover.

Welcome to Week Three of the Revolving Door Project’s Corruption Calendar, where we highlight examples of corporate corruption shaping the Trump administration’s agenda and their material impact on everyday people.

And what a Week Three it has been. The Trump administration’s pace will likely not relent and neither will ours as we continue to chronicle the Trump favor machine.

This week, we will focus on the development that has naturally freaked out most people following the news: Elon Musk’s dizzying level of unchecked power in the second Trump administration.

ELON MUSK’S HOSTILE TAKEOVER

It’s important to remember that everything Elon Musk does to exert power over the federal government is basically corrupt. He is in his current position because he is the richest man in the world, and he donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump’s presidential campaign (as well as the likely even more significant, albeit opaque, shifts in the algorithm and management of Twitter).

And, need I remind you, Musk has a bevy of interests affected by the federal government. As one New York Times article put it: “There is no precedent for a government official to have Mr. Musk’s scale of conflicts of interest, which include domestic holdings and foreign connections such as business relationships in China. And there is no precedent for someone who is not a full-time employee to have such ability to reshape the federal work force.”

With that in mind, here are some of the top Musk corruption hits from the last week:

• Musk’s Lackeys Have Gained Control Over the Nation’s Checkbook. Last Friday morning, we learned that a top career Treasury official, David Lebryk, was forced out of his job after he denied “DOGE” “officials” access to a Treasury payment system that has been called the country’s “checkbook.” Musk has apparently made some noise about using the system to root out “improper payments,” but it’s not clear he has any understanding of what they are (I wrote about this in November, and it’s still true). Instead, Musk could use the payment system to bolster his interests in federal contracts, while also shutting down any spending he decides he doesn’t like—Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, for instance. The legacy systems used in the system are also notoriously complex, and if the henchmen that Musk has deployed to Treasury—Silicon Valley CEO Thomas Krause and 25-year-old ex-SpaceX and ex-X engineer Marko Elez (who, update, resigned yesterday over his horribly racist posts)—mess up, the consequences could be disastrous. (For more, I highly, highly recommend the reporting of Nathan Tankus at Notes on the Crises.)

• Musk’s Lackeys Have Gained Control Over a Lot of Other Stuff Too.

  • Friday, 1/31: Reuters reported that “Musk aides” at the Office of Personnel Management had “locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.”

  • Friday, 1/31: WIRED reported that “Musk’s minions,” including his former interns, had “taken over the General Services Administration.”

  • Monday 2/3: At the Small Business Administration (SBA), DOGE was reportedly given “access to all SBA systems” after one of Musk’s youngest lackeys, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, requested access.

  • Wednesday, 2/5: WIRED reported that an engineer named Nikhil Rajpal who is “representing” Musk’s DOGE at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had been granted “editor access to all NOAA Google sites.”

  • Thursday, 2/6: The Washington Post reported that DOGE employees “have fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software to probe the agency’s programs and spending.”

• Musk’s Illegal Gutting of USAID Comes Amid USAID Probe of Musk’s Starlink. Early Monday morning, Musk cheerfully reported that he had “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” What was left unsaid is that Starlink’s contracts in Ukraine were apparently being probed by USAID’s inspector general. Worse, Trump’s illegal aid freeze has already directly harmed some of the most vulnerable people in the world, who have now lost access to meals, healthcare, and shelter. Musk is now set to cut USAID’s workforce from over 10,000 to under 300.

• Musk Said “Delete CFPB.” Apparently Scott Bessent Was Listening. In November, Musk tweeted “Delete CFPB,” referring to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that has long drawn the ire of bankers and Silicon Valley. After Trump fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra on Saturday, he installed as Acting Director current Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who immediately halted all agency action. (Read more from our Julian Scoffield.)

• Musk Will Determine His Own Conflicts of Interest, a Move Some Are Calling a Conflict of Interest. We learned this week that Musk officially joined the federal government as a “special government employee,” a classification that RDP has long opposed for top advisors (as opposed to experts with narrow expertise, like scientists or architects) as it is easily abused by those who seek to shirk financial disclosure and ethics requirements that apply to full time employees. Even worse, the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Musk will determine for himself when he has a conflict of interest, which is itself a clear conflict of interest. It’s a ridiculous standard, but customary of an administration that has so far declined to release ethics rules—normally standard practice in the first days of a new administration.

RDP RESOURCE: The People Reportedly Aiding Elon Musk and DOGE’s Attack on the Federal Government. Who works for DOGE? Using public information, we compiled a list of people who are reportedly involved in Elon Musk and DOGE’s government takeover. We will update the list as more reporting comes out, and we will continue adding additional information, such as a list of agencies that DOGE personnel have visited. ProPublica also released its own DOGE personnel tracker last night.

(DIS)HONORABLE MENTION

• As Trump Profits From Crypto, His SEC Winds Down Crypto Enforcement. A few days before his second inauguration, Trump launched a meme coin. His pre-inauguration posts promoting his coin were reposted by his accounts on January 20th and 21st. On Thursday, his media company moved to create a Bitcoin ETF. The crypto industry also followed up its campaign donations with additional checks to Trump’s inaugural committee. As Andrew Perez at Rolling Stonenotes, Coinbase, Kraken, Galaxy Digital Holdings, Crypto.com, and Paradigm Operations each donated $1 million. To the surprise of no one with a pulse, one of Trump’s early executive orders commanded a stop to “regulatory overreach that [has] stifled crypto innovation.” His SEC is now scaling back an office focused on crypto enforcement, in what will likely not only be a boon to Trump himself but also hard-working ransomware engineers the world over.

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