One day after a Treasury Department employee associated with Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting efforts resigned following a Wall Street Journal report about his racist social media posts, the Trump administration has vowed to reinstate the employee.
Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and X who is leading the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, posted on X Friday, “He will be brought back.”
Vice President JD Vance publicly voiced support for the employee — Marko Elez — who was one of two government employees associated with Musk who was given access to sensitive taxpayer information.
“Here’s my view: I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance wrote.
Asked about the calls to rehire Elez during a press conference Friday, Trump said he agreed with Vance’s position to forgive and reinstate the former Treasury Department employee.
Earlier Friday, Musk posted a poll on X asking users of the platform if the Elez should be reinstated, resulting in 78% of respondents supporting his return to the Department of Government Efficiency.
After a user commented about the need to “have a talk to about the racist stuff,” Musk responded, “True.”
Elez resigned from his post Thursday after the Wall Street Journal unearthed racist past social media posts by Elez.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Treasury Department after it was reported billionaire Elon Musk, who is heading U.S. President Donald Trump’s drive to shrink the federal government, has gained access to Treasury’s federal payments system that sends out more than $6 trillion per year in payments on behalf of federal agencies and contains the personal information of millions of Americans, in Washington, Feb. 4, 2025.
Kent Nishimura/Reuters
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” Elez said in one post from July according to the Wall Street Journal article.
“Normalize Indian hate,” the account wrote, as well as “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
ABC News has not independently verified the social media posts. A DOGE representative did not respond to a request for comment. ABC reached out to Elez who did not immediately respond.
Prior to his resignation, Elez found himself in the middle of the Trump administration’s legal battle for DOGE to access sensitive taxpayer data.
Elez was employed by the Treasury Department as a “special government employee,” according to the Department of Justice. Under the terms of a consent order signed this week, Elez was one of the two individuals associated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency given “read only” access to sensitive taxpayer information from the Treasury Department.
Prior to joining the federal government last month, Elez worked for two of Musk’s private companies — SpaceX and X.