[astroid]

I did the same manual analysis I did on the OP one, and could not find a first party source or non-anonymous claim.

I asked CoPilot to analyze the sources and identify the individual claims, and their proximity to a 'first party source'.

Once again, there is 0 evidence this is actually happening -- there are however a lot of news organizations ready to throw their reputations away over a few 'anonymous sources' that aren't even primary.

Here is the analysis of your source, AND the linked sources in that article:

Wired: Reports that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer linked to Elon Musk, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. The sources are unnamed, and they claim Elez has administrator-level privileges, including the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System1.

Talking Points Memo: Confirms Wired's reporting, adding that Elez has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment systems. Again, the sources are unnamed1.

The New Republic: Details that Elez has complete access to critical payment systems at the Department of the Treasury, despite being only 25 years old. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that senior government officials have been locked out of employee databases1.

Raw Story: Reports that Elez has been given full control over the computer code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns, and other payments owed to Americans. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that federal IT workers are concerned about the potential for irreversible damage to the systems2.

In summary, all the sources cited in the article are anonymous, and there are no first-party sources or direct evidence provided. This makes it difficult to verify the claims independently. The lack of named sources and concrete evidence raises questions about the credibility of the claims.

[cozzyd]

This evidence is circumstantial but Elez's GitHub account recently removed the profile picture.

Anyway, I don't know anything about the Wired reporters but I trust Josh Marshall to not make shit up.

[astroid]

Fair enough - I am going to wait until someone is willing to go on the record and preferably more than one source.

For what it's worth, I read the talkingpointsmemo article on this because of your statement as I take you for an actual human being who trusts someone who wrote on the topic, which is more than I can say about most of the articles so far. (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/musk-cronies-dive-into-...)

I don't know anything about Josh Marshall but I did check his Bias Score (which I take with a grain of salt but it's at least somewhere to start with unknown actors) and it didn't raise red flags other than 'skews strongly left' and 'mostly accurate' (which is not unexpected given the subject): https://adfontesmedia.com/talking-points-memo-bias-and-relia... and https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/talking-points-memo/

However, the paragraph that Josh wrote really only makes one claim which is again not first party or 'on the record', where he stated

"I can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system."

'based on conversations going back to the weekend' is perhaps the weakest claim of the bunch of articles being analyzed here. He doesn't even bother to list the # of sources, the type of source - he is simply confirming he had a conversation during which this claim was made.

In fact, his entire post on this topic is pasted below:

"Overnight, Wired reported that, contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to “read only” access to department payment systems, this is not true. A 25-year-old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems, which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the U.S. government, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system."

I am going to need a lot more than that to take these extraordinary claims at face value -- and that does not mean I am saying he is 'making things up' either. I'm willing to take it at face value he had this conversation and believes it.

It still appears that this is just a circle of people who are predisposed to dislike what Trump/DOGE are doing, that are all referencing each other (circularly) making very wild claims. Nobody seems willing to take the liability of making the claim definitively though - it's all hearsay and '.. someone said' level discourse.

This is not news. It's rumors, at best.

I'm not saying it's not true - maybe it will shake out to be true when someone actually does some reporting on the topic. For the moment, it should be getting reported as rumors rather than fact - but that doesn't seem to be happening.

I just think it's wildly irresponsible to take such flimsy claims at face value, especially when so many people are emotionally invested in this outcome.

All said though, I certainly HOPE it isn't true - as that would be an egregious oversight that I would not expect either Trump or Musk to be OK with. Frankly I can't stand Musk, but this just doesn't pass the smell test.

EDIT: Not to belabor the point, but this 'fake' story from Josh Marshall doesn't exactly instill confidence his unsourced paragraph is going to hold up to whatever standards he has set for himself:

'Failed Fact Checks “We know this now. The banks no longer loan (Donald Trump) money because he’s a terrible risk. So he goes to these (Russian) oligarchs and borrows money.” – Mostly False'

It seems the 'mostly factual' basis is due to him generally being good about sourcing, which isn't even being attempted here.

[cozzyd]

Yes, it's always tricky when the sources are anonymous (to be clear, they're likely not anonymous to the journalist), but you can imagine not too many people would want their names to be public under the circumstances.

[astroid]

Scott Bessent OR David Lebryk could very easily confirm this story if it was true, and yet neither have.

They have absolutely nothing to lose at this point, so that should be another giant red flag that everyone is banking on the word getting out and the 'myth' that Elon gave some kid write access to the most important treasury databases in the world, and in 6 months it will turn out all of this was a 'misunderstanding' and half of the country will swear up and down it was proven to be true and the only reason no one got in trouble is because Musk/Trump are corrupt and in cahoots.

Absolute madness.

Again though - I will take the journalist at his word he heard a conversation where this was stated in the paragraph he published. He is still just regurgitating third hand info.

Honestly, how hard would it be if you were in DC to just plant ANY story you want right now with this level of 'fact checking' and 'reporting'?

If you had even a semblance of prominence or just spoke authoritatively, you could go to a coffee shop near the press corps, say a bunch of inflammatory stuff, and everyone has plausible deniability... "well, all I said was I heard it said... I didn't claim it was really true I just heard it!". Then the rumor mill gets ahold of it, and every reprint lends an air of credibility to a story created out of thin air.

Not trying to disparage him or say he is doing exactly that - but the level of reporting is genuinely that flimsy, and the continued reporting as if it is true is creating a veneer of 'truthiness' or whatever the fashionable word is these days.

It's very frustrating to watch all common sense go out the window just because something bad was said anonymously about 'the bad guys'.

If it turns out there is meat here I'll be the first to admit I was wrong and this is a crazy situation - right now it looks like the odds of that are reaching 0.

[LastTrain]

I am going to go out on a limb and say if this turns out to be true, you will find some way to rationalize it. Call me crazy.