The U.S. Treasury has brought in at least two people connected to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, according to people familiar with the matter: Tom Krause, the chief executive of Cloud Software Group and Marko Elez, an engineer who has worked for SpaceX and social-media platform X.
The men both have offices in the Treasury Department, along with agency email addresses as well as clearance to access some secure but unclassified Treasury information, people familiar with the situation said.
Before President Donald Trump took office, a member of the transition team began setting up meetings with Treasury staff, Krause and Elez, said one of the people, who spoke on condition they not be identified by name because they are not authorized to discuss the matter.
The pair were later formally brought on at Treasury, although their exact roles are unclear to much of the department’s staff, the person said. Since joining, they have aimed to meet with staff who perform the hands-on management of the government payments system and database, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Code request
Last week, Krause and Elez traveled to a federal facility in Kansas City to meet with the agency staff there responsible for the payment system, according to that person.
They also sought access to the underlying code, the person said — alarming some Treasury staff, because the operation of this infrastructure is tightly controlled due to its critical position in the U.S. financial system. It’s unclear whether the duo have obtained direct access to the code and why they would want it, according to people familiar with the situation.
The Treasury didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Krause and Elez didn’t immediately respond to text messages and a voicemail seeking comment Tuesday.
It’s unclear if Krause has stepped away from his role as CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Cloud Software to work with DOGE in his new job at the Treasury, or if he’s doing both jobs at the same time. A Cloud Software spokesman declined to comment.
Slashing costs
A longtime technology executive, Krause in 2022 was hired away from Palo Alto, California-based semiconductor maker Broadcom, where he served as chief financial officer and president of the company’s software group, to lead Cloud Software, a newly created tech giant that was born out of the $16.5 billion acquisition that year of Citrix Systems by private equity firms Elliott Investment Management and Vista Equity Partners.
Krause’s job at Cloud Software was to merge Citrix, a maker of widely used remote-access software and cybersecurity technologies whose uneven financial results had made it a target for a private equity takeover, with a smaller company called Tibco Software and to deeply cut their expenses. As is the case with many leveraged buyouts, Citrix’s new owners loaded the company with billions of dollars in debt to finance the transaction and mass job cuts soon followed.
In a
“If that influence is being used to repair government systems,” which aren’t state-of-the-art as found in the private sector, “that could be a welcome development,” former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. “If it’s being used to violate the law about Congress’ ability to appropriate money, or if it’s being used to target particular beneficiaries, that would be something that would be highly problematic.”
Trump on Monday said that Elon Musk, who heads the DOGE initiative, “can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval” with regard to federal payments oversight at the Treasury. “We’ll give him the approval where appropriate,” the president said at a White House event with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent alongside.
Summers, a paid contributor to Bloomberg TV, said, “This is an area where the Treasury secretary has an important responsibility — as all Treasury secretaries do — to protect the basic integrity of the way the government does finance.” He said his “hope, very much, and my expectation would be that Secretary Bessent will live up to that obligation.”