U.S. Senate Committee On Finance:

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., demanded answers from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today following a report that personnel affiliated with Elon Musk have sought access to a highly sensitive Treasury Department payment system. That system, which is maintained by non-political staff, disperses trillions of dollars each year, such as Social Security and Medicare benefits, tax credits for individuals and businesses, grants and payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk-owned companies.

Senator Wyden wrote in a new letter: “To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems … The federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”

His letter continued: “The press has previously reported that Musk was denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China — a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems — endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”

The full text of the letter is available here. [Continue reading…]

Elon Musk’s lead hatchet man on his DOGE team was one of his first hires at SpaceX, Steve Davis — who also ran a frozen yogurt store in Washington DC. “I like to do something new about every six to nine months and a lot of them fail.”

He describes his relationship with Musk: “Look here, Davis, get this done!”

At a gathering of libertarian devotees of Ayn Rand, Davis said: “I know nothing about politics.”

At Twitter, Davis was credited for his “success in bringing costs down by any means necessary“: