Court Documents Shed New Light on DOGE Activity at Treasury Department
35 comments
·February 13, 2025EcommerceFlow
DOGE has shown how screwed up the balance between the 3 branches has gotten.
The executive should have the power to fire/remove executive associated departments/employees, obviously.
The executive should not be able to authorize drone strikes/war without congressional hearings (which has been occurring for decades at this point)
etc.
alistairSH
That ignores the history of how the government came to be run by a class of largely apolitical, professional bureaucrats.
The government used to turn over almost entirely with each administration. This wasn't good - the loss of institutional knowledge was largely thought to be harmful. So, the country decided to protect many of the bureaucrats, with only the top tier being political appointees.
diogocp
Well, the problem is that they are not "largely apolitical".
They should be, but if they aren't, and if they are incapable of faithfully executing orders that go against their political preferences, they should be fired.
The loss of institutional knowledge is unfortunate, but the loss of democratic control over the bureaucracy is unacceptable.
alistairSH
Except that's largely not true - government agencies always (with very rare exception) implement the will of Congress, as directed by the President.
Never (in modern times) have rank-and-file government employees been required to pledge fealty to the president (vs the Constitution). That's happening now.
Never (in modern times) has the President purged massive swaths of agencies with whom he's had run-ins in the past (DoJ, FBI, etc). Or, in the case of USAID, it's Musk taking revenge because they had the nerve to investigate Starling outages over Ukraine.
Much of what we're seeing today is petty revenge.
4ndrewl
[flagged]
snowwrestler
I hope not because this is a detailed, well-reported article by an experienced journalist based on court documents provided under oath. And it clarifies some earlier sensational reporting.
Edit to add: The author is Kim Zetter:
trothamel
I'd also say that there's a lot of technical detail in this, about how government systems work and what sort of access the doge-associated treasury employees have to them.
That seems like the sort of news about this that HN should keep.
tayo42
This will probably stay becasue it paints the Elon doge thing as at least neutral and the media in general as hysterical.
If this is all true I don't get how these departments are being shut down then. Whole thing is messy
pauloday
Nope, took about an hour but it's flagged now. IMO the people doing the flagging just don't want anyone to think about this stuff at all.
jc_811
Yeah kind of disappointed how every article around what’s going on in the current administration is getting flagged almost immediately.
As long as the discussions remain civil and discuss these topics in a nuanced manner - they should not be getting flagged.
josefresco
I've remailed Dang twice now (and I suggest you do the same), it needs to be addressed. Maybe the flag tool removed or throttled for a period of time.
Mistletoe
It just needs to be removed forever. Upvotes and downvotes work just fine on Reddit and other sites. Flagging is used on HN as a censorship tool and I can’t imagine how the community allows it to continue. Flagging should be used for something like gore on the front page and it should be a report to mods button that when misused gets the user in hot water.
evilduck
OTOH,
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
These are pretty off topic based on site guidelines.
I don't personally need a HN rehash of AP News.
rpeden
[flagged]
ToValueFunfetti
Are we using the same HN? There is a clear anti-Trump sentiment in every one of the dozen-or-so threads on the subject every day. Almost every pro-DOGE comment is downvoted. Are you seeing something different, or are you just upset that people who disagree are allowed to participate at all?
Mistletoe
They all finally showed their true colors and what motivates them deep down- the ability to make even more money, humanity be damned.
andrewflnr
The top of most threads here are anti-Trump, as far as I've seen.
josefresco
They seem quick today, I'll give this another 7 minutes.
TurkishPoptart
GAO reported that there's over $200 B in fraudulent payments made a year, so it seems perfectly reasonable to let DOGE in and review that. It's new, it's messy, and unusual, but it's absolutely necessary.
alistairSH
Preventing fraud does not require allowing a 19 year old alleged cybercriminal have broad access to government systems.
There are more systematic, less disruptive ways to accomplish these goals.
Or, to put it a bit of hyperbole around it... "Burn it to the ground!" is rarely the best approach to changing a system that is largely working as intended.
snowwrestler
I think there may be a false dichotomy in some people’s minds between a new emphasis on detecting fraud, and existing emphasis on maintaining the security of sensitive data and mission-critical systems.
This article shows at least some evidence that Treasury is actually trying to do both. And that existing security professionals have been involved in the process.
cantSpellSober
It's more nuanced than "let DOGE in and review that"
> Gioeli [told the court], however, that Elez may have "occasionally" taken screen shots of payment system data or records to share with a second DOGE employee working with him at Treasury
sjsdaiuasgdia
The problem is that there are legal definitions for fraud, but Trump and Musk are very prone to calling any spending they don't personally agree with "fraud".
The rule of law is important. This is not rule of law.
mikecx
I don't question the need for an audit. I do question having a ketamine fueled oligarch and a rag-tag group of 20 year old software developers doing an audit, pretending audits take days, and somehow only finding things conservatives hate as waste/fraud.
alistairSH
But government agencies ARE audited!
EDIT - since apparently HN doesn't believe me, auditing the executive branch is one of the primary functions of the GAO. This started in 1997. And while DoD's finances are still extremely problematic, the government overall has made massive strides in making itself auditable and accountable. And there are very low levels of actual fraud being found. While statements like the "DoD failed it's audit" are technically true, it's not because fraud was uncovered - instead it's because of decades of poor accountability, a problem the government has been actively working on correctling for nearly 20 years.
mikecx
Totally, the departmental audits happen yearly and are available to the public. It doesn't bother me if they want to do a separate audit but these aren't audits, aren't being performed by auditors, and are clearly just a partisan attack on our institutions.
This reads as a list of security fundamentals, however it is a "never at all acceptable" list; A blueprint for generating resume generating events. Nobody in a controlled environment could justify giving same-day hire developers write access to prod. Any mature financial institution would have asses hitting doors before the end of the day.