Treasury Sought to Freeze Foreign Aid Payments, Emails Show

Politics|Treasury Sought to Freeze Foreign Aid Payments, Emails Show

In the days after President Trump took office, as Elon Musk’s team began pressing for access to the Treasury Department’s payments system, officials repeatedly said that their goal was to undertake a general review of the system. They said they would observe, but not stop money from going out the door.

But emails reviewed by The New York Times show that the Treasury’s chief of staff originally pushed for Tom Krause, a software executive affiliated with Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to receive access to the closely held payment system so that the Treasury could freeze U.S. Agency for International Development payments.

In a Jan. 24 email to a small group of Treasury officials, the chief of staff, Dan Katz, wrote that Mr. Krause and his team needed access to the system so they could pause U.S.A.I.D. payments and comply with Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to halt foreign aid.

“To the extent permitted by law, we would like to implement the pause as soon as possible in order to ensure that we are doing our role to comply with the EO,” Mr. Katz wrote.

The emails viewed by The Times undercut the Treasury’s explanation for why Mr. Krause and his team were given access to the payment system last week. That system disburses more than $5 trillion in funding on behalf of much of the federal government.

The department, now led by Secretary Scott Bessent, has said that Mr. Krause, a Treasury staff member, and his team are conducting an “operational efficiency assessment” that does not involve blocking agency payments.