Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department’s data systems.
“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,“ one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”
Musk, OPM, representatives of the new team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside OPM raised concerns about congressional oversight at the agency and how Trump and Musk view the federal bureaucracy.
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The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.
“It feels like a hostile takeover,“ the employee said.
Malague did not respond to a request for comment.
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
The acting head of OPM, Charles Ezell, has been sending memos to the entire government workforce since Trump took office, including Tuesday’s offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay.
Among the group that now runs OPM is Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee, who is now OPM’s chief of staff. In some memos sent out on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 by Ezell, including one directing agencies to identify federal workers on probationary periods, agency heads were asked to email Scales at her OPM email address.
Another senior adviser is Riccardo Biasini, a former engineer at Tesla and most recently a director at The Boring Company, Musk’s tunnel-building operation in Las Vegas.
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