Staff at the Federal Reserve cooperated with the Treasury Department to give Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency access to federal payment systems, according to a new court filing.
The
In late January, officials from the Treasury Department — including two DOGE team members who were also Treasury employees — had meetings with Fed staff in Kansas City, according to a preliminary agenda for the event. At those gatherings, officials held technical discussions on two crucial Treasury payments systems.
"The Federal Reserve has only interacted with Treasury Department employees and only at the request of the office of the Treasury Secretary," according to a statement from the Fed. "Federal Reserve staff are always in regular contact with staff in Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Services because the Federal Reserve provides banking and payments services to the Treasury as its fiscal agent."
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Congress in February that the central bank has had "no contact" with DOGE.
Thomas Krause, the Cloud Software Group CEO who's acting as the Treasury DOGE team lead, was slated to attend the meetings, according to the filing. Also included:
Both Krause and Elez at the time served in a dual capacity, both as Treasury employees and as members of the DOGE team.
Treasury Department officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The documents outlining those meetings were included in an 215-page filing by Treasury Chief of Staff Daniel Katz as part of
The Fed acts as the fiscal agent for the federal government, processing payments on the Treasury Department's behalf. Powell has said the central bank makes no judgments on outgoing government payments.
The partially redacted preliminary agenda did not name the Fed officials participating, identifying them only as the "FRB leadership team." The document stated that a final list of participants would be added later.
Payment systems
DOGE access to payment systems — the Payment Automation Manager and the Automated Standard Application for Payments — has been a controversial subject, with lawmakers and government officials raising concerns about the privacy and security of the flow of federal money.
It could also reopen the debate over "prioritization" — the idea that the Treasury Department could decide to make some payments and not others in the event of a debt-ceiling crisis. If Congress fails to raise the $36.1 trillion debt limit before the Treasury exhausts its available cash, bondholders might still be paid while contractors, employees and perhaps even Social Security beneficiaries have their payments reduced or delayed.
Kansas City is a major back-office hub for the complex web of systems that manage $5.4 trillion in annual payments by the federal government. The Treasury's Federal Disbursement Services is located there, as is the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which effectively serves as the bank for some of those payments.
A spreadsheet compiled after the meeting gave a status report on giving DOGE access to Treasury systems, including the PAM, which the government uses to process all U.S. dollar-denominated payments. Many of the systems required both the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service and the Federal Reserve to approve access, with some access requests marked as "completed."
"For the items that Fiscal can implement independently we will get moving immediately, and Marko should see read-only soon," said an email from Matthew Garber, who was then performing the duties of the Fiscal Assistant Secretary.
"For the items the Fed needs to implement we're working with the lawyers on the language now. Good conversations with our counterparts, so I do not currently expect any issues," according to the email from Garber.
Congressional questions
The meetings came two weeks before Powell's testimony to the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 12, when the panel's top Democrat Maxine Waters quizzed Powell on whether the Federal Reserve was cooperating with DOGE.
"When Musk comes knocking at the Fed's door, you going to let him in?" she asked.
"I don't have anything for you on that," Powell said.
"Would you like to tell us today that you won't let DOGE into the Federal Reserve or have access to the systems and the data?" Waters followed up.
"We've had no contact," he replied.
In a memo outlining the DOGE payments project dated Jan. 24, the Treasury Department contained a stern warning for the repercussions if Musk's cost-cutting efforts interrupted payments.
Any disruption to daily operations, the document said, "could have catastrophic consequences" that could include defaults on government financial obligations and jeopardize social support payments to millions of Americans.
In a Senate hearing on Feb. 11, Powell said any decision to stop payments comes from the Treasury Department, not the Federal Reserve.
"We make no judgments whatsoever. Those are all made upstream from us and we are, in fact, the fiscal agent of the Treasury," he said.
