In another sign that U.S. government is being handed over to BigTech vultures, a Silicon Valley CEO with ties to Elon Musk‘s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” was installed in a key position inside U.S. Treasury.
The move came after a cadre of Musk-connected operatives reportedly forced out David A. Lebryk, Treasury’s highest-ranking career official.
Tom Krause, as Washington Post noted, succeeded Lebryk and is now in the position with sweeping control over America’s payment systems (emphasis mine):
Krause, a Silicon Valley executive with ties to DOGE, will become the financial assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, the people said. He replaces David A. Lebryk, who resigned after clashing with Krause over demands to stop payments on foreign aid — a measure Lebryk resisted as illegal. Krause’s position will give him control over the Treasury Department system responsible for disbursing more than $5 trillion in annual payments, including for Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds and thousands of other measures. Musk has demanded on social media that Treasury unilaterally stop sending these payments, accusing the department’s career staff of breaking the law.
WaPo further reported that “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.”
This news came shortly after another DOGE staffer at Treasury, Marko Elez, resigned after evidence of racist posts resurfaced.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
Maureen Tkacik’s piece in American Prospect is required reading for context on “hatchet man” Tom Krause. In it, Tkacik spills quite a bit of tea about how reviled Krause is by former employees, and that he was brought in to “solve” a tech company’s debt crisis by slashing jobs, perks and programs.
Krause, a doughy 40-something who gained global renown this week after The Washington Post identified him as the apparent Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets illegally accessing Treasury Department payment systems, got the job done. Citrix, which would later be renamed Cloud Software Group, announced about 1,000 layoffs right off the bat in fall 2022, followed by another, deeper round of several thousand more comprising 15 percent of its staff in January 2023, despite having 125 open positions listed on its website.
