Musk Did A Hostile Corporate Takeover Last Night, A Coup, But It’s Getting Almost No Press

Maybe I’ll take a page from Donald Trump’s playbook and start screaming in all-caps and sprinkle in plenty of exclamation points. Do you realize that just last night, Saturday night, February 1, 2025, an unelected man took control of the US Treasury’s $6 trillion payment system, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the General Services Administration (GSA), while locking out actual government employees from computer systems that run the government? Why is this not the lead story on every outlet in this country?

I know Musk is a pain in the ass and people hate his personality so stories about him do not get a lot of views here, traditionally. But to hell with that, I’m going to chronicle this weekend’s events and what they mean. This is not even remotely normal. As Charlie Sykes explains it,

This all may look like bureaucratic inside-baseball. But “these are not policy tweaks. They are a hostile corporate takeover of the federal state.”

So this seems like good day to dust off historic relics. Like the actual Constitution.

I woke up today to a blanket of snow across the Wisconsin landscape and some questions: We have a Constitution and we have laws — a vast network of precedents, statutes and rules. But who is going to enforce them?

We have a Congress, vested with sweeping and exclusive powers over the nation’s purse. Has anyone heard from it lately? Or are its leaders just hanging out at some gerontological spa?

And the opposition party? “‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump.” —NYT […]

Let’s start with Musk’s march through the federal government, shall we?

Sounds bad. Because it is. Here’s today’s Wapo: “Musk aides gain access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system.”

Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said.

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues.

What’s in these systems? Everything.

The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying 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.

Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them.

Musk is already boasting that he is using his access/power to unilaterally stop payments — including congressionally authorized payments to faith-based charities. At the same time, Musk’s flying monkeys have “locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.”

What does the law have to say about all of this? AYFKM?

Trump continues to fire civil servants, inspectors general, and prosecutors — all of whom have protections under the law. He’s also abolishing agencies without bothering to get congressional authorization. This is also illegal.

Illegality is the watchword of the day for this administration, which makes complete sense. You elect a convicted felon, you’re probably going to see criminal behavior. Leopards don’t change their spots, they just eat your face, even if you think they’re supposed to eat the other peoples’ faces and not yours.

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. When Kash Retribution Patel gets in control of the FBI and so far that appears to be the way things are rolling, the purge could be tremendous. He will finish the job that Acting FBI Director David Driscoll stonewalled.

In a message that circulated widely among bureau personnel, an FBI agent summarized what happened as: “Bottom line — DOJ came over and wanted to fire a bunch of J6 agents. Driscoll is an absolute stud. Held his ground and told WH proxy, DOJ, to F— Off.”

The Justice Department didn’t fire Driscoll, who is the head of the Newark office, but Patel will probably make that his first priority. Patel lied to the Senate, “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” but we all know that’s bullshit.

Bottom line, Musk and other toadies of Trump have a lot of power and soon they will have even more. We are depending on a federal judiciary (the ones that aren’t in Trump’s camp) and razor-thin margins in Congress to save us.

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