The former acting Treasury Secretary, appointed by President Trump last week while he waited on the Senate to confirm the new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, has just resigned after clashing with DOGE over access to a Treasury payment system.
According to the Washington Post, David Lebryk is the highest ranking career official at Treasury and apparently isn’t happy with these requests for access by DOGE.
Here’s more from WAPO:
The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
A spokeswoman for DOGE declined to comment. Lebryk could not be reached for comment late Thursday.
When Scott Bessent was confirmed as treasury secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be the acting agency head.
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing 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.
The executive order Trump signed creating DOGE also instructed all agencies to ensure it has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which would appear to include the Treasury payment systems.
Lebryk is obviously wrong here because the president’s EO is so clear that even the Washington Post has to acknowledge it. Unelected bureaucrats cannot stand in the way of what President Trump orders. It’s just that simple. Adios.