Please join this open letter from Dr. Liv Coleman to Rep. Vern Buchanan, Vice Chair of the House Ways & Means Committee.

February 4, 2025

Dear Rep. Buchanan:

We are writing and visiting your office today to express our deep alarm and concern over Mr. Elon Musk’s hostile government takeover of our U.S. federal administrative agencies under the auspices of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

We are asking you to use your oversight powers as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee to ensure that all payments to social security, veterans, Medicare, and Medicaid payees will flow uninterrupted and that the security of their personally identifiable information will never be compromised. We are also asking you to ensure that the federal government will always make timely payments on its debts and all other financial obligations to citizens and contractors.

Mr. Musk is the richest man in the world, a South Africa-born centibillionaire who does not have a government security clearance or other formal vetting by the U.S. Congress to serve in such an important administrative position in the U.S. government. He should not be handling our most sensitive information, processes, and computerized systems. Mr. Musk has many conflicts of interest due to his wide-ranging business interests, large contracts with the federal government, and relationships with foreign actors from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to his extensive business interests in China.

The New York Times noted in a February 3, 2025 article (“Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion into the Federal Government”) that Trump officials said that “Mr. Musk was widely seen as operating with a level of autonomy that almost no one can control.” The reporters also found that a number of “former and current senior government officials – even those who like what he is doing – expressed a sense of helplessness about how to handle Mr. Musk’s level of unaccountability. At one point after another, Trump officials have generally relented rather than try to slow him down. Some hoped Congress would choose to reassert itself.”

The stakes of Mr. Musk’s control over the U.S. Treasury Department could not be higher. As the New York Times article noted, the Treasury Department payment system is typically operated by a group of core civil servants with “deep technical expertise.” Current and former officials from the Treasury Department reported that “a mishap could lead to critical government obligations going unpaid, with consequences ranging from missed benefits payments to a federal default.” 

We know from reporting from Wired magazine that Mr. Musk is receiving assistance from a group of young men who are in college or who recently graduated from college, usually with no government experience (“The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover,” Feb. 2, 2025.) Sources told Wired that Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran are six young men working with Musk on the DOGE project. Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran “all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according to a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols.” 

The New York Times article referenced earlier mentioned that “Mr. Musk’s aides, including Mr. Farritor, have requested access to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services systems that control contracts and the more than $1 trillion in payments that go out annually, according to a document seen by The Times.”

We also know from Wired magazine reporting that a “25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government” (“A 25-Year-Old with Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System,” February 4, 2025). They found that Mr. “Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the U.S. government. The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the U.S. economy.”

Rep. Buchanan, as Vice Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee and Chair of the Health Subcommittee, we call on you to use your oversight powers to examine the unprecedented happenings in the Treasury Department. We ask you to promptly investigate the activities of Mr. Elon Musk and his DOGE representatives who have assumed control over the critical financial payment systems of our federal government. We ask you to ensure that Mr. Musk and DOGE representatives do not tamper with the computer code for the critical processing of our federal payments; do not halt payments to individual payees, government contractors, or U.S. debt-holders; and that you take all necessary steps to protect the privacy and security of personal information including social security numbers and far beyond. 

We ask you to hold a Town Hall so that constituents in your community who depend on veterans benefits, social security, and Medicare and Medicaid payments can get answers about what is happening and learn about what steps you are taking, if any, to protect them. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best,

Dr. Liv Coleman

Bradenton, FL