- A 25-year-old DOGE staffer, who resigned last week after being linked to a social media account that shared racist posts, was briefly given edit access to the Treasury Department’s secure payment system.
A 25-year-old DOGE staffer who resigned after being linked to racist social posts was briefly given edit permission over the Treasury Department’s payment systems, according to an official’s affidavit.
In the affidavit, Joseph Gioeli III, deputy commissioner of transformation and modernization at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, stated that Marco Elez was “mistakenly” given “read/write permissions instead of read-only” in an error that was “promptly corrected.” The read/write permissions occurred during Elez’s supervised, walk-through session, and an initial investigation found that “no unauthorized actions had taken place,” Gioeli said in the document.
“To the best of our knowledge, Mr. Elez never knew of the fact that he briefly had read/write permissions for the (Secure Payment System) database, and never took any action to exercise the ‘write’ privileges in order to modify anything within the SPS database,” Gioeli said.
The new document comes after various reports questioned what permissions the 25-year-old was granted over sensitive government payment systems. The Treasury had previously stated that DOGE had only been given read access, but a report from Wired had raised questions about that claim.
Democrats and other critics have decried DOGE’s access to sensitive information. Several Democratic lawmakers have also requested an investigation into the access that the Musk-led team was given to the government’s payment system. In a series of letters, they cited “threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data.”
Representatives for the Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.
Elez’s uncertain status at DOGE
The 25-year-old made headlines last week when he resigned from his role at Elon Musk’s DOGE after being linked to an X account that shared racist content.
The account, which has since been deleted, reportedly shared a post calling to normalize “Indian hate,” another that suggested Gaza and Israel be “wiped off the face of the Earth,” and one that said: “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
Fortune could not independently verify the posts, which were reported by The Wall Street Journal. The White House later said Elez had resigned from his role at DOGE.
Musk, President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance have since advocated for Elez to be reinstated in his role.
“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance said in a post on X.
“We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,” he added. “So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.”
Trump later said he was “with the vice president” when questioned about Elez and Vance’s response during a news conference.
Musk has also polled X users about whether to bring the DOGE staffer back after making “inappropriate statements.” He later said Elez would be reinstated after 78% of respondents voted “Yes.”
