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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> People voted for this

Quite literally, no. Elez (the 25-year old) reports to Musk. There is nobody elected above him.

Bessent, hours before this broke, claimed he "signed off on a plan to give 'read-only' access to the payment system to a team led by Tom Krause" [1]. This kid allegedly had write access. And he doesn't report to Krause. He should be getting arrested on espionage charges.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/bessent-musk-doge-t...

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lets not forget that Trump created a new department and put Elon in charge, the DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY. With that in mind Musk can hire anyone he wants yes? Trump gave Elon the clearances and powers needed to do this work. It's no different in my opinion than the CIA hiring confidential sources or the FBI hiring contractors.

I mean Elon isn't going to personally do the work as department head...

> Trump gave Elon the clearances and powers needed to do this work

Where? Trump gave Elon SGE status, nothing more.

Also, there are statues that Trump can’t unilaterally void. That isn’t practically relevant for Trump. But it is legally relevant for these kids—they’re illegally accessing government servers.

> no different in my opinion than the CIA hiring confidential sources or the FBI hiring contractors

If the CIA or FBI were breaking into the Treasury, we’d have an analogy.

I think the Executive has signed off on it. It's not like Trump would personally do these things. He has partnered with the best and brightest to implement the vision for America that the majority of voters asked for. Like it or not, it's how elections work.

That is not how elections work. Elections do not override existing law. Otherwise you could easily get a dictator who says "I am legitimately elected therefore there it is the will of the people that there are no more elections"

But you said "best and brightest" so I'm assuming you're trolling.

Good chance a lot of the "laws" that prevent the executive from taking actions are probably unconstitutional anyways. The constitution is pretty clear on this and the current executive is within its boundaries, even if various congresses made illegal laws to prevent these types of actions after FDR used them.

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