But Judge Kollar-Kotelly spent much of the hearing in fact-finding mode, peppering a Justice Department attorney, Bradley Humphreys, with questions about the nature and extent of the access provided to the DOGE-aligned individuals.
Question #1: Who has or had access to the information maintained in the payment system?
During the hearing on Wednesday, Humphreys, on behalf of the Justice Department, initially stated that only one DOGE associate had access to the Treasury Department’s payment system: Marko Elez… Later, Humphreys clarified that the system is also accessible to Tom Krause, a software executive affiliated with DOGE.
According to Humphreys, Krause supervised Elez’s work within the Treasury Department, where both men were designated “special government employees.” A special government employee is a person who is expected to work in the federal government for a 130-days or less during a 365-day period. Special government employees are subject to most government ethics and conflict of interest rules, though “sometimes in a less restrictive way.”
Humphreys insisted that information from the payment system is not accessible to third parties outside the Treasury Department—including Elon Musk. …. While a transcript of the hearing is not available to me at the time of this writing, I cannot recall any instance in which Humphreys stated that information accessed by Elez and Krause has never been disclosed to a third-party.
Question #2: What kind of access privileges do DOGE associates have?
[E]ven if it’s true that Musk-aligned staffers currently have read-only access to the payment system, it’s not at all clear that they didn’t maintain extensive access privileges in the past. Indeed, multiple reports suggest that DOGE-affiliated staffers at one point had the ability to alter code—a privilege that was apparently suspended only recently. And CNN’s reporting suggests that, at least initially, Krause wanted to use the payment system to directly block payments.
Have DOGE staffers actually altered code? Have they actually used the payment system to block payments? I don’t know. … [T]he Justice Department’s apparent reluctance to address whether DOGE associates previously did anything with the records certainly suggests that it’s worth asking the question.
Question #3: What exactly is DOGE’s role in all this?
Humphreys told Judge Kollar-Kotelly that Krause and Elez have “read-only” access to the payment system. He told her that none of the information in the system is being transmitted to Musk. In fact, he said, no information is being transmitted to any third-party, including anyone within the Executive Office of the President at DOGE.
All of which raises the question: If a 25-year-old special government employee in the Treasury Department can only “read” the payment system information, which he can’t then share with DOGE, what exactly is DOGE’s role in any of this?
For now, it’s fair to say that there’s a lot we don’t know about what DOGE is up to. And therein lies the problem.
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