A federal judge has temporarily barred the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk, from accessing the personal financial data of millions of Americans kept at the Treasury Department.
The late-night order, issued Saturday by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan, blocks most Trump administration officials—including Musk and members of his cost-cutting initiative—from accessing sensitive Treasury records for at least a week while the case proceeds in the New York court.
The injunction specifically prohibits President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from granting access to records containing personally identifiable or confidential financial information to political appointees, special government employees, or any other employees from outside of the department. The White House has designated Musk a special government employee.
Under the order, only those working at the Bureau of Fiscal Services and have passed background checks may access those records in order to do their job.
The judge further ordered any person among those whom he restricted to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.”
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Feb. 14.
The decision was made after 19 state attorneys general sued the Trump and Bessent after DOGE was given access to the Treasury records. DOGE is an advisory body tasked to identify ways to reduce government spending.
The attorneys general argued that Musk and DOGE, which is not an official government department, should not have access to such highly sensitive financial data. They claimed that the move violates federal law and presents a massive cybersecurity and privacy risk.
“Defendants’ new expanded access policy poses huge cybersecurity risks” that put “vast amounts of funding for the States and their residents in peril and endangers the [personally identifiable information] of States’ residents whose information is stored on the payment systems,” reads the complaint, which was filed late Feb. 7 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Musk responded to the controversy Saturday, saying in a post to X:
To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:
- Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.
- All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!
- The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE
. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.
When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!!
This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.
Engelmayer agreed with the state’s argument that they “will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief.”
“That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,” Engelmayer wrote.
There was no immediate comment from the White House or Musk.
The decision is the latest in a series of judicial interventions blocking the Trump administration’s rapidly unfolding actions to overhaul the federal bureaucracy. Just hours before Engelmayer’s order, another federal judge in Washington halted a Musk-led initiative to dismantle USAID, the agency responsible for administering foreign aid programs.
In recent weeks, judges have also intervened to block Trump’s early executive actions ending automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil, pausing federal grants and loans, offering buyout to federal workers, and sending male inmates who identify as transgender women back to men’s prisons.
As Charlie Kirk of TPUSA notes;
New York Judge Paul Engelmayer just forbade all political appointees — including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — from accessing Dept. of Treasury data, all based on Blueanon conspiracy theories!!
Those theories couldn't be challenged because the order was EX PARTE — meaning Trump's lawyers weren't warned, and couldn't weigh in. Only Democrat Attorneys General were allowed to argue.
The judge cites no law or logic to support this unprecedented order, because it defies both. The judge’s ruling is, in essence, that Scott Bessent simply occupies a ceremonial position without real power, like the King of England.
This is a grenade thrown into the functioning of the Treasury Department.
It forbids the elected government from accessing information about budget and finances. Instead, only the permanent, deep-state government can know what's being spent.
It means Scott Bessent's subordinates have far more power than Scott Bessent does.
Democrat pundits who whine about the Constitution are liars, and will shred it the first chance they get.
For now, the order is only for the next week, but if a court tries to make it permanent the Trump Administration should absolutely consider defying it.
Better yet, SCOTUS should bar this judge from ever hearing similar cases again, and every Democrat lawyer involved should be sanctioned.
As always, the Deep State is the enemy of democracy.
