By Chris Prentice and Douglas Gillison
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is beginning to onboard officials with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to an email sent on Friday to department staff.
According to an email seen by Reuters, SEC staff were informed that the DOGE task force had contacted the SEC, and that they would be treated as staff for the purposes of network, system and data access. The SEC is establishing a liaison team with the “intent to partner” with DOGE, the email said.
“Our intent will be to partner with the DOGE representatives and cooperate with their request following normal processes for ethics requirements, IT security or system training, and establishing their need to know before granting access to restricted systems and data,” the staff email stated.
A spokesperson for the SEC confirmed that it was beginning to onboard DOGE members. A spokesperson for the DOGE task force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As the nation’s top markets regulator, the SEC is privy to swaths of nonpublic data from banks, public companies, private funds and others, including confidential information about initial public offerings and supervisory examination records.
In the email, SEC staff said they expected DOGE officials to primarily work through the SEC’s liaison team, but staff may be contacted directly. In those events, staff were told to “respond courteously” and gather information about any DOGE requests, but “please do not provide any substantive information” without first consulting the SEC’s liaison team.
(Reporting by Chris Prentice and Douglas Gillison; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Pete Schroeder and Mark Porter)
