During his campaign, Donald Trump promised to use Elon Musk to improve government efficiency, partly by ending the incredible graft and corruption permeating the bureaucracy.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Musk and his youthful four-man crew, using the power of AI, have identified a host of fundamental problems in the Treasury Dept.
To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:
- Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.
- All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying any judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that some attempt be made to explain the payment more than nothing!
- The do-not-pay list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!
Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100 billion a year of entitlements payments to individuals with no Social Security number or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.
When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50 billion a year or $1 billion a week!
This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.
There can be no justifiable reason for any American to contest these actions. Nevertheless, on Feb. 8, a federal district court judge, Paul Engelmayer, sitting in the Southern District of New York, committed the most grotesque act of lawfare this nation has yet seen.
After an ex parte hearing at which no one from Trump’s administration was present, Engelmayer exceeded his constitutional power with an order usurping the president’s executive authority.
In the order, Engelmayer held that President Trump’s political appointees have no access to the Treasury Department, which means that the president has no access.
He also held that DOGE’s actions are so patently unlawful that DOGE must destroy all information it already gleaned from examining the Treasury computer system. To add further outrage, he ordered DOGE to comply with his order even before there is an actual hearing on this matter.
As one attorney commenting as @amuse on X wrote:
The implications are staggering. By stripping the executive branch of access to its own financial data, this ruling effectively transfers control of the federal purse to the permanent bureaucracy...
This is lawfare at its most brazen: a raw, partisan power grab dressed up in legalese. If allowed to stand, this decision sets the precedent that any left-wing judge can unilaterally strip the President of his authority and hand it to the administrative state. That is not democracy. It is not law. It is judicial dictatorship.
A little primer in the Constitution will help explain just how foul Englemayer’s decision is.
Most have heard that the Constitution creates a separation of powers, though given the sorry state of civics education today, probably few fully understand it. Separation of Powers was Montesquieu’s great contribution to 18th-century political thought. He realized that to prevent tyranny, a government’s power needs to be diffused by breaking it into several branches.
Tyrannical governments were the great evil of the 17th- and 18th-century world. When our Founders wrote the Constitution, our Revolution, which fought to end tyranny, had ended only four years earlier. They were also 97 years from the last English revolution launched to replace a tyranny and 139 years removed from the English Civil War, another attack on tyranny. Our Founders knew that separation of powers was critical to creating a functioning Republic.
Our Founders accomplished this goal in two ways.
First, they divided general powers, and second, they gave the three branches some overlapping functions, such as the president nominating officers subject to the Senate’s power to confirm them (Art. II, Sec. 2), or placing control of the military in the president (Art. II, Sec. 2) while the sole power to declare war rests with Congress (Art. I, Sec. 8).
As to the three general power powers of all governments, the Constitution mandates that “all legislative powers are vested in Congress” (Art. I, Sec. 1); “all executive powers [the power to enforce the laws] are vested” in the president (Art. II, Sec 1); and all judicial power “shall be vested in one Supreme Court” (Art. III, Sec. 1).
There was good reason for dividing up these powers.
If a tyrant could make the laws and then enforce them through the state’s police power and the courts, that was the very definition of an autocratic state, whether it be called an autocracy, a police state, or a tyranny. In this regard, it should be noted that the tyrant need not be an individual. The Soviets proved this.
Under the Constitution’s organization, regulatory and administrative bodies are all part of the Executive Branch. And as Art. II, Sec 1 explicitly states, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President...”
The president has plenary (i.e., absolute) power over all executive branch bodies, including the Treasury. This means neither Congress nor the judiciary may interfere. Additionally, as commander in chief, the president has plenary authority to classify or declassify documents and to authorize or remove security clearances.
Where an authority is plenary, no judge may substitute his judgment for the president’s. And yet that is precisely what Judge Engelmayer has done. This is a coup by lawfare.
If allowed to stand, Judge Engelmayer’s order will amend our Constitution by fiat. This is as great an assault on the fabric of our constitutional Republic as our nation has seen since 1776.
Trump’s response must be aggressive and resolute. To vindicate the Constitution, he must declare that the judge’s order is null and void, and he should send a message to the House asking it to impeach Judge Engelmayer.
