One of the continuing mysteries about the DOGE intrusion into the super sensitive payments computer system housed at the Treasury Department is just what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as well as other administration officials and lawyers mean by “read-only” access. For starters, it’s not clear that “read-only” is actually a privilege level on the systems in question. But that’s kind of a technical detail. More importantly, both Wired and TPM have independently reported that now-defenestrated DOGE operative Marko Elez in fact had administrator-level privileges on the same system. In other words, not “read only,” but full access to do pretty much anything if they chose to. And that’s not what people are thinking when they hear “read-only.” So what is it? Are the Treasury Secretary or the DOJ lawyers who went into court lying? Is there some technicality we’re not thinking of?
