DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

We did Nazi see that coming

Final update Marko Elez, a former SpaceX, Starlink, and X engineer who was granted access to examine a critical US Treasury payment system by the Trump-blessed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has quit that team after he was linked to a racist Twitter account.

The 25-year-old DOGE operative resigned Thursday after the Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection, if any, with problematic posts on Elon Musk's social network.

It all stems from a C-programming-themed Twitter handle called @nullllptr that, according to the Murdoch-owned newspaper, had advocated for a "eugenic immigration policy," called for repealing the Civil Rights Act, and urged Silicon Valley to "normalize Indian hate."

"You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity," @nullllptr was quoted as adding in September.

The account, which apparently used to be named @marko_elez, was deleted in December, and @marko_elez continues to exist on Twitter as a separate account. @nullllptr earlier claimed to be an employee at SpaceX and Starlink. Elez previously worked at both places as well as X, where he focused on AI, based on archives of his personal website.

"Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," @nullllptr reportedly said in July.

In response to those tweets being surfaced, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt simply said the techie had now resigned from his role. We're seeking comment and clarification from him.

The engineer's previous employer Elon Musk now heads up DOGE, the President-approved team that has been rifling through US federal government systems for personnel, programs, and contracts to cut that the Tesla tycoon doesn't approve of. The billionaire's businesses, which are regulated by the same federal government, continue to have commercial dealings with Uncle Sam.

Elez's resignation came the same day a federal judge issued a temporary order allowing Elez read-only access to a vital, central US Treasury payment system. The court order limited this access to two DOGE aides, Elez and Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause.

This followed earlier reports that Elez at least had gained privileged access to certain American government servers, such as those within the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which handles a significant portion of federal disbursements. ®

Updated to add on February 7

On Friday, Elon Musk said he wants to re-hire Elez, after President Trump and Vice President JD Vance indicated they wanted the engineer back at DOGE.

Final update on February 13

It was reported earlier that Elez was allowed to modify code directly in production within the Treasury, and had obtained read-write superuser privileges on systems. But Joseph Gioeli, a career federal IT exec at the government department, has in an affidavit said Elez had in fact much more restricted access.

As Gioeli tells it, the DOGE aide had to use a locked-down dept-issued laptop; accessed copies of Treasury source code in a sandbox environment on that PC, and not in production; had read-only access to examine a payment management database; and had accidentally been given write privileges for a day before administrators realized, and there's no evidence the 25-year-old even knew or used that.

That said, Vona Robinson, a senior Treasury official, disclosed in a separate court affidavit that Elez did make a change to the system with staff to identify certain payments, seemingly so that the Secretary of State could review them. Also it appears Elez and Krause were indeed the only two people from DOGE allowed to directly review the Treasury IT environment.

What has DOGE been up to? There are various reports of the team, with the White House's blessing, accessing highly sensitive systems, some involving personal data and classified materials, at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the General Services Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Dept of Education, at least.

This has included, it's said, analyzing sensitive Dept of Education data with AI tools in Microsoft's Azure cloud. All with the stated intention of rooting out inefficiencies and things to cut, aka stuff Musk doesn't find appropriate.

Elon Musk sets a high bar, literally, for DOGE staff to be fired, at Trump's 2025 inauguration ... Click for source

So far it's reported those working on behalf of DOGE include Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran, as well as Krause and until now Elez. Musk allies Anthony Armstrong, Riccardo Biasini, Brian Bjelde, Steve Davis, Stephen Ehikian, Nicole Hollander, Amanda Scales, Thomas Shedd, and Christopher Stanley have also been installed in Washington, it's understood.

Meanwhile, Republicans are blocking Democrats' attempts to subpoena Musk over his DOGE campaign. Ted Carstensen, the deputy administrator of the United States Digital Service that was renamed to DOGE and commandeered by Musk, has resigned and not taken an OPM-offered severance deal. NASA staff were also reportedly told to delete indigenous people, women in leadership, and others, from public websites, as part of Trump's anti-DEI executive order.