Washington (AP) – The General Inspector’s Office of the Ministry of Finance said on Friday that the Federal Government’s payment system was examined after democratic Senators had raised Rote Flags about access to the Department of the Trump -Aide Elon Musk. Team.
The examination is also checked for the last two years of the transactions of the system in relation to Musk’s claim of “alleged fraudulent payments” by a letter from Loren J. Sciurba, the deputy general inspector of the treasury, which was received by the associated press.
The exam marks part of the more comprehensive efforts by the Democratic legislator and the unions of the federal government to ensure transparency and accountability for DOGES activities as part of President Donald Trump’s republican administration. The Musk team has pushed for access to the government’s computer systems and tried to remove tens of thousands of federal workers.
“We expect us to start our field work immediately,” wrote Sciurba. “In view of the width of these efforts, the examination will probably not be completed until August. However, we recognize the risk that improper access or inadequate controls for the integrity can represent sensitive payment systems. If we come to featherlight critical topics before this time, we will issue preliminary updates and reports. ”
General Inspector of the Ministry of Finance began the audit before democratic legislators asked for it. AJ Altemus, acting consultant of the General Inspector, said: “Our work is initiated independently”, and standards determine that the audit must be “impartial and objective. These standards remain unchanged. “
The Tech billionaire Musk, who, among other companies, continues to control Tesla, X and SpaceX, claims to find waste, fraud and abuse and at the same time to achieve taxpayers, many of his previously unfounded claims. However, there is a risk that the aggressive efforts of his team will lead to the failure of government computer systems and enable Musk and its partners to benefit from the government’s maintenance of private information.
The test would overlap with increasing pressure, which the Trump government should serve the general inspectors, the President’s representative, who are supposed to serve as an independent check against mismanagement and abuse of state power. In January, the administration dismissed several independent general inspectors among government agencies, a step that some congress members said, violated the federal supervisory law. The shots initiated a lawsuit submitted in front of a federal court in Washington on Wednesday, in which the general inspectors are supposed to return to their work.
Democratic senses. Elizabeth Warren von Massachusetts and Ron Wyden von Oregon stated the initiative for the investigation by the General Inspector in the Ministry of Finance.
On Wednesday, Warren, Wyden and Senator Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, sent a letter to Finance Minister Scott Bessent, in which he found the inconsistencies in the accounts provided by his department about Doge.
“Their lack of openness to these events is given the threat to the economy and the public of Doge’s interference of them,” wrote the democratic legislators in their letter.
The financial department provided contradictory information about access to Doge’s payment system. First of all, it was claimed that the access had only been read in order to then recognize that a DogeTeam member briefly had the opportunity to edit code, and then to say in an employee statement that the ability to process was granted by chance.
The 25-year-old employee granted access this month, Marko Elez, after racist contributions on one of his social media accounts had been discovered, only so that Musk demanded his reverberation with the support of Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Interest representative groups and unions have submitted complaints about the potential non -authorized access to sensitive treasury payment systems, and five former Ministry of Finance has the alarm for the risks, which with Musks Dogen access to sensitive payment access systems in connection with Musk access to sensitive treasury -Department systems and potentially stopped congress -autorized payments.
At the beginning of this week, the Ministry of Finance rejected a couple of the highest legislators of the Senate Financing Committee, including Wyden, negative controversy in connection with Dogy’s exploit of financing payment systems, citing on the ongoing legal disputes.
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This story was corrected to show the surname of the general inspector of the financial inspector that Sciurba, not Sciburba.
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