Hot Takes: Morgan Finkelstein

"This is not a shake-up. It’s arson."

Hello dear pals, and welcome to Hot Takes, Hot Tip’s expert interview series. This week, Hot Tip pal Morgan Finkelstein answered a few questions for me (and thus, for you!!!!) on wtf is going on in Washington, what Elon’s endgame is, why it’s dangerous, and what we can do about it.

Morgan Finkelstein and Former Treasury Secy. Janet Yellen

Morgan Finkelstein was a Senior Spokesperson for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the US Department of the Treasury as part of the Biden Administration.

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Big picture, first. You've worked in multiple White House administrations (Obama, Biden) and on many Democratic campaigns. What about this current moment feels different than other transitions from one party to another, including Trump's first term?

Hello Alex’s readers, thanks for having me. The 2024 election fucked around, and we are deep into finding out. Welcome to what we meant by “democracy is at stake.”

If you recall, Trump 1.0 was pretty bad, as was the Bush era and really, where all this started, the Reagan years. But what’s different now is that Republicans have fully just said, fuck it, we’re not going to follow laws anymore, and what are you going to do about it?

To put it another way, past administrations were using the US government to get away with as much bad stuff as they could. This administration has decided that the best way to achieve their goals — rich people getting richer and society run by white, Christian males — is to simply cease having a federal government at all.

How are they doing that? Another key difference today is that the Republican Congress has fully ceded its power to the executive branch. Remember when we all learned about co-equal branches of government? Well, one of the branches decided to just say “nah, I’m good” and bow out of the whole checks and balances thing.

Republicans in Congress have fully relinquished their authority to Trump. So even when Trump does stuff that is not within his power to do, stuff that actively screws Congress, they just roll over and say “thank you sir, may I have another!” And since Democrats are in the minority, they can’t do much about it besides try to slow it all down.

Okay, now on to Elon (derogatory.) At Treasury, Musk and his team have been granted access to the systems that handle Social Security, Medicare, federal government salaries, tax refunds, and much more, totaling $6 trillion dollars annually. Given that he is best known for building ugly trucks for insecure men and unsubtle Nazi salutes, what is he even doing there?

Trump and Musk are going to steal your money to make themselves and their friends richer. That’s it!

Ok, a little more detail.

So, basically, when the federal government spends money — on things like salaries, grants for research or preschools or infrastructure projects, social security checks for tens of millions of Americans, healthcare payments for grandma’s insulin, etc. — they do so through a very secure, protected payment system at the Treasury Department. I know it’s kind of wild to wrap your head around, but money the government spends has to come from somewhere, right? It comes from the Federal Reserve and is paid out by Treasury.

Importantly, Treasury doesn’t choose or analyze who gets paid by this system. That happens waaaay earlier in the process, and those decisions lie with whomever is actually the account holder. Spending the government’s money is covered by about a billion different laws, including a bunch to protect against waste, fraud, or abuse. By the time Treasury gets involved, it’s basically just to say oh look, the Department of Transportation wants a payment for a new bridge, here we go sending money from DOT’s account to the bridge company.

Which brings us to now, here in the Bad Place!

Elon Musk and his incel henchmen Tom Krause and 25-year-old Marko Elez¹ have barged their way into this system and are just… doing whatever they want in there. They seem most interested in stopping payments to things they don’t like; a hypothetical use case could be stopping all Social Security payments to old people in Milwaukee until the mayor agrees to cooperate with an ICE raid or closes all abortion clinics. It’s not hard to think of terrible things from a bunch of MAGA Youth who are uninterested in following laws.

Now that there’s a ton of media attention on them, the DOGE dorks have started to make up dumb excuses for why they’re in the system; they seem to be going with “looking for fraud,” but that is a lie. They are lying! And they do not care if they get caught.

Yesterday, a court sort of told them to stop, but it’s a tenuous pause at best.

To your knowledge, is there any kind of precedent for an unelected and non-Senate-confirmed individual getting this level of access to sensitive information? Or even being let in the door without a visitor pass?

I cannot stress enough how highly protected this system is — or, I guess, was. No one has ever tried to do what this crew is doing. Not even Trump 1.0.

This system has the most sensitive information (sometimes even classified information) on literally every US taxpayer. I know we are all kind of numb to daily data breaches at like, Target, but this is even more serious than your credit card number. It’s bank accounts, it’s your tax history, medical conditions, not to mention top-secret contracts the government pays or salaries to like, undercover spies.

The information is so sensitive that only a handful of nonpolitical, technical employees in the whole government are even allowed to look at it, let alone touch it. Improperly accessing this data can be a literal felony.

I know you are all wondering and let me assure you: I was absolutely not one of the people allowed to access this system!

So no, there is no precedent for this.

Musk was granted access late on a Friday evening. Why?

There was a nonpolitical civil servant, a 35-year veteran of the Treasury Department, who was pushed out of his job last week for standing between Musk and this data. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent forced his staff to let Elon in.

That was likely illegal, but Musk’s team is banking on the fact that the court processes will take a long time, and their smash-and-grab will take a short time.

You worked specifically on financial crime and corruption for three years at Treasury. What are the things setting off alarm bells for you right now?

In anti-corruption work, there is a concept called “state capture,” where corrupt leaders use the powers of the state to benefit their own interests. This is a very bad thing, and if America saw this happening somewhere in the world, we would sure do something about it.

In Musk’s case, the phrase is quite literal: these thugs have captured the government’s treasure chest and will use it to enrich themselves and punish their business competitors, political opponents, and everyday Americans.

I've read a few pieces that refer to Musk's hostile takeover of various executive departments and federal agencies as a coup happening in plain sight. Would you agree with that appraisal?

Sure — all the scary words apply here. I cannot stress enough, this is the real deal.

It’s really important to ignore Musk when he claims that “unelected bureaucrats” are just salty he’s “shaking things up.” These people all worked for Trump in the “drain the swamp” era! They can handle shake-ups.

This is not a shake-up. It’s arson.

I've noticed you love trolling Trump appointees on LinkedIn and are really good at it. This one isn't a question, just a moment to appreciate your efforts.

Thank you. I think being a dick to people on LinkedIn is kind of unexpected, so it’s fun. Also, I don’t think the LinkedIn algorithm has been radicalized by bad tech bros (yet!) so you can still occasionally pierce information bubbles over there.

What should we be doing about this? How can we get Congress to act in this pivotal moment? Does calling and emailing really make a difference?

Yes! At this point, calling still makes a difference, as does going into offices physically if you’re near one, ideally with a group like Indivisible. Even — and maybe especially — if you have a Democratic Senator. Way too many Dems are approving Trump appointees while all this chaos is going on! We can’t stop it all, but we can slow it down.

Our queen AOC did a 92 minute IG live on ~everything~ that is a really good summary of what’s going on and concrete things to do about it. I recommend going through it all (you can treat it like a podcast, listen to it on the way to work or something) because she’s probably the greatest communicator in the country right now. On Reels here or on Youtube.

Members of Congress may act like they don’t feel the pressure, but they do. And they definitely notice when it’s not there.

I totally hear people who have gotten into a place of “well we called last time and we’re right back in the same place.” I’m sorry! I don’t want to be doing this again either. I am literally so tired. But don’t forget that last time, all of the grassroots momentum unseated more Republicans than anyone could have predicted. We even had a Democrat from Oklahoma?? So, unfortunately, we do in fact need to do this all again if we want to stave off the worst.

If nothing else gets through your cynicism, know this: every minute spent on the phone with one of us is a minute that some dipshit Republican staffer can’t spend doing something worse. Be. That. Petty.

Is there anything else you want us to know?

I think it’s important to remember these are not evil geniuses or supervillains. Don’t give them more power or credit than they deserve. Some of their tactics are modernized for the tech era, but the fundamentals are the same shit conservatives have been pulling for most of our country’s history.

Purging federal workers who fall afoul of their made-up “DEI?” That’s Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 re-segregation of the government, baby!

January 6 rioters getting away with it and the president trying to pretend it never happened? That’s the Tulsa Race Massacre! Or the Wilmington Coup, or the Colfax Massacre, or the Elaine, Arkansas massacre, or… you get the picture.

So, yes, awful stuff is happening right now and people will literally die. Things will be irreparably damaged. We will all lose a bunch of money. But the people we are up against are the same losers that rear their ugly heads throughout the American existence. Don’t let buzzwords like “the price of eggs” or “concerns about immigration” gaslight you into thinking any differently.

As AOC says, we outnumber them, we can slow them down, and we are absolutely on the right side of history.

1. Since publishing, Marko Elez has resigned. Given that Morgan’s interview was published moments earlier, we can only assume this is why. Or, at least, that’s what we’re going with.