A key Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee has resigned from his role after he was connected to a deleted social media account supporting racism and eugenics, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Marko Elez, 25, had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system.
Elon Musk says he will rehire Marko Elez, after the software engineer gained the backing of Vice President Vance and President Trump.
DOGE employee’s racist posts
The 25-year-old engineer, Marko Elez, was a previous staff worker for two of Elon Musk’s companies. As a DOGE employee, Elez had first-hand access to the Treasury Department, where most payments are made.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” The deleted X account stated in July, as claimed by the WSJ’s review of archived posts. In September, the account posted, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” In response to a post highlighting the number of Indians in Silicon Valley, the account said, “Normalize Indian hate,” in the same month.
In June, the user spoke about the conflict in the Middle East, offering support for Israel but also said, “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”
Musk and Vance back Marko Elez
Following the WSJ’s inquiry into the X account, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt shared that Elez had stepped down from his role. Elez was in a legal battle over access to confidential taxpayer information and systems, which the Treasury Department used to process trillions of dollars in payments yearly.
On Thursday morning, a judge decided that Elez could still access the department’s payment systems but restricted his capacity to share the data. Elez quit later that same day.
On Feburary 7, the day after his resignation, Musk sent a poll to his followers on X asking if Elez should be reinstated. He later posted that he would rehire Elez. Musk and Vice President JD Vance also took to X to attack Katherine Long, the investigative reporter who brought public attention to Elez’s posts. Her story about Elez was her first in her new job at the journal.
What is DOGE?
DOGE, formally known as the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, was created by President Trump on January 20 to reduce federal spending. Elon Musk holds the position as the head of DOGE. It claims it has saved over $1 billion by rolling back on DEI contracts and other expenses, as stated by DOGE’s social media account.
There are plans to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is responsible for humanitarian efforts around the globe. DOGE also has access to federal departments such as the Treasury Department, Federal Aviation Administration technologies, Department of Education, which Trump has promised to dismantle.
Musk is a “special employee,” meaning he could work for the federal government for a short time with or without pay. In December, he asked people to DOGE on X, pledging to long hours and little pay in exchange for the opportunity to transform the federal government.
Image: Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo
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