Trump’s DOGE is a shadow government and tech billionaire Elon Musk has a criminal record – a reaction from Silicon Valley

As DOGE officials move quickly to get their hands on the inner workings of the federal government, Musk has been posting through it on X, the social media platform he owns, suggesting routine payments of the Treasury are violating the law and asserting that USAID is “a criminal organization” without providing evidence to support these claims. Musk did not return requests for comment.

On his first day in office, President Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Trump put tech billionaire and adviser Elon Musk in charge and vowed to use the unit to cut government waste and slash federal regulations.

There are some Democrats who don’t like the wide latitude and access given to DOGE. Schumer said that the federal government was being taken over by an unelected shadow government.

Musk has been using X to pounce on his critics who questioned the reach of his authority and the amount of scrutiny he is receiving from the White House.

Eric Rubin spent 40 years in the foreign service and he said rule of law is lost quickly. “Musk and DOGE are intentionally creating hundreds of potential court cases that could take months or years to resolve,” he said. “But who knows what kind of damage they can inflict before that happens.”

Musk is an employee of the government and can work for up to 130 days a year. That means he’s subject to different ethics and disclosure rules than regular federal employees.

“He may not participate in any United States government matter that has a direct and predictable effect on his financial holdings,” said Richard Painter, who served as the White House’s top ethics lawyer under George W. Bush. “If he does, he commits a crime,” said Painter, pointing to federal laws governing special government employees.

Rubin, a retired foreign service officer, said that there are no exceptions to the restricted access given the rooms contain sensitive material and that the chance of a government employee accessing SCIF material without proper clearance is concerning.

“No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” Katie Miller, a DOGE official, wrote on X on Sunday. Leavitt said she had not yet got information about Musk’s security clearance.

Some young engineers from Silicon Valley have joined Musk’s effort. It includes the special adviser to the director of the federal Office of Personnel Management. The University of California, Berkeley was where Kliger was educated. He worked as a software engineer for multiple companies, most recently at Databricks where he was the senior software engineer.

A USAID.gov email address belonging to Kliger appeared on an email sent early on Monday morning to USAID staff informing them the agency’s Washington headquarters would be closed for the day. NPR didn’t ask about his role at either OPM or USAID.

DOGE is a Treasury Department Payment System, and every American has a First Amendment right to Protect the Privacy of Social Security, Medicare, and Social Security

DOGE also has access to a Treasury Department payment system the government uses to cut checks to everyone from Social Security beneficiaries to government contractors.

Norm Eisen is a former White House ethics lawyer who was hired by Barack Obama. I can’t give you my data. You don’t have my spouse’s data. You can’t have my kid’s data. Eisen said that information is too precious and that he represents the alliance. “This is wrong. It’s illegal.”

Career civil servants at the Office of Personnel Management soon found themselves locked out of the agency’s computer system that maintains federal employees’ personal data, Reuters reported on Sunday. The action was linked to Musk’s aides.

The departure of a Treasury Department top career official started the news on Friday. David Lebryk announced his retirement after clashing with Musk surrogates about accessing a payment system that disburses trillions of dollars for federal worker salaries, Social Security, and Medicare, according to The Washington Post. On Saturday, The New York Times reported that Musk now has read-only access to that system, giving him more insight and potential control over government spending — and likely access to your Social Security number.

She covers Capitol Hill and the intersection of Silicon Valley as a policy reporter at The Verge. She wrote about privacy and antitrust for 5 years at CNBC.

OPM spokesperson McLaurine Pinover told The Verge that the Reuters report was not accurate but did not elaborate. The representatives from the Treasury Department, US Digital Service, and the US Agency for International Development didn’t respond to requests for comment on recent reports.

Musk has called the agency a criminal organization. On Monday he said he and Trump sought to shut down the agency entirely, without addressing their legal authority to do so, NBC News reports. Several Democratic lawmakers spoke out against Musk’s attempt to wind down the agency and said only Congress is able to make such a declaration, vowing to fight the attempted takeover and calling it a constitutional crisis. “Elon, if you want to run AID, get nominated by Trump and go to the Senate, and good luck in getting confirmed,” says Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA).

Wyden and Warren demanded answers from Bessent on whether Musk had access to the Treasury payments system. And protests outside federal buildings have begun popping up, including one on Sunday where DC Media Group reports protesters sought to block access to OPM.

Even so, some anonymous Reddit users who identified themselves as government employees said they planned to keep plugging away more or less as usual. “I’m going to continue to do my job,” one user writes in a thread about how to handle the situation. One says to use your headphones. There are other offers that say, head down eyes and ears open.

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The United States Digital Service was created under the previous President, and rather than creating a new Cabinet-level department with DOGE, Trump renamed it.

Trump’s order also moves the entity from the Office of Management and Budget to the Executive Office of the President, and directs it to modernize technology and software across the federal government.

The decision to scrutinize the six-decade-old organization — which Musk said he made with Trump’s approval — was welcomed by some Republicans but received pushback from Democrats.

The office under President Trump that is supposed to make changes to the federal government is already moving quickly, however it has been questioned the legality of some of its actions.

The United States Agency for International Development personnel will be withdrawn from overseas by this weekend, according to three sources with knowledge of internal planning.

Many USAID employees have been placed on leave and restricted access to their workspace, being ordered to stop all work. Hundreds of independent contractors have been laid off or furloughed. Guidance to employees has been inconsistent and unclear, stoking fear and chaos amongst staff worldwide.

I understand the emotional toll this will take on those impacted and the team assisting, as well as the feasibility concerns. We’ve been asked to staff a 24/7 Coordination Support Team in the Ops Center’s Taskforce space beginning immediately.”

The plan to recall overseas staff was described to NPR by current and former federal government officials who were not authorized to speak publicly and feared retribution.

On late Monday night, a memo went out to State Department employees asking that overseas missions provide the number of USAID employees and dependent family members at their locations.

A report by the Congressional Research Service says that nearly two-thirds of the 10,000 employees at the US Agency for International Development serve overseas.

Employees would have just days to figure out where to go, how to arrange pet care, leave children out of school, and allow their spouse to make arrangements if they were to be recalled. The cost of withdrawing a thousand foreign service officers and their families will be high, multiple diplomatic sources tell NPR.

“It will be logistically challenging, very expensive and disorganized,” said the employee who was not authorized to speak publicly. Many people have kids in school.

The Trump administration’s funding freeze has already made it hard for the U.S. to use funds in countries where it pays the operational cost of the mission. That has led employees both within and outside USAID to fear that soon they’ll lose access to electricity, communications, security backups, trash pickups, medical evacuations, and other services.