The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, had a plan to infiltrate the US Treasury payment systems and halt payments to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), according to new court documents, emails, and affidavits obtained by WIRED.

Court documents reveal that DOGE had been preparing to use US Treasury Department systems to monitor and halt USAID payments from the earliest days of the second Trump administration. The plan involved granting Marko Elez, a former engineer at X, access to sensitive Treasury systems, including the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS).

Access to Sensitive Systems

Elez was granted read/write access to the PAM and SPS systems, as well as read access to the Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) system, which stores federal funds in pre-authorized accounts. This level of access is uncommon, if not unheard of, for a Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS) employee.

The plan was to use this access to intercept USAID payment files and manually review them before releasing them to the normal payment processes. This would have allowed DOGE to effectively throttle USAID's funding and halt payments to the agency.

Implementation of the Plan

The plan was implemented in late January, with Elez arriving in Kansas City, one of the main BFS sites, to identify opportunities to advance payment integrity and fraud reduction goals. During his time at the facility, Elez manually identified and reviewed foreign aid payment files that had been sequestered in a folder outlined in an email by Matthew Garber, a top Treasury official.

Meanwhile, Treasury officials sought to give Elez even further access to sensitive systems, including the Central Accounting Reporting System, which is the electronic system of record for the government's financial data.

Consequences of the Plan

The implementation of the plan had significant consequences for USAID, with the agency's funding being effectively halted. In late February, USAID announced that it would cancel 90% of the agency's contracts, throwing nonprofits around the world into chaos and slowing the response to infectious diseases.

A federal judge has since ruled that the dismantling of USAID likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways.

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