Federal judge extends order blocking DOGE access to Treasury payment system

A Manhattan federal judge on Friday temporarily extended an order blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency workers from accessing U.S. Treasury Department payment information, handing a limited victory to Letitia James and more than a dozen other state attorneys general.

The top state law enforcement officials had filed suit on Feb. 7 seeking to block DOGE, a program established by President Donald Trump’s administration to slash federal spending and pare down the government, from accessing databases in the Bureau of Fiscal Services, which handles 90% of all federal payments. New York State received $94.3 billion in federal funding last fiscal year, according to the federal complaint.

District Court Judge Jeannette Vargas had issued a temporary restraining order the day after the suit was filed. On Friday, she ruled the order would stay in place for now but said that she would issue her full decision soon.

James charged in the suit that bank account and Social Security numbers, among other personal and sensitive information, had been put in jeopardy because DOGE employees had access and sent screenshots of the data to other members of the newly-created department.

The IRS has denied that any unauthorized access has been granted, though the lead attorney for the government acknowledged Friday that a full investigation has not been completed.

“This is Treasury Department employees accessing Treasury Department information,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Oestericher told the judge.

Oestericher, in a brief, called the judge’s decision to halt DOGE’s access unconstitutional.

Referring to the article in the U.S. Constitution establishing the powers of the president, he wrote, “No court can issue an injunction that directly severs the clear line of supervision Article II requires. Because the order on its face draws an impermissible and anti-constitutional distinction, it should be dissolved immediately.”

On Friday, James also raised constititional concerns during a news conference ahead of the court hearing.

“No one elected Elon Musk or his minions, and no one has allowed him to have access to this information,” she said. “This is a violation of the separation of powers — The United States Congress, the United States Senate, has the sole discretion in having the power of the purse, and not Elon Musk.”

Access in question

The lawsuit charged that Musk and his young support staff had been allowed unauthorized access to the crucial payment system to prevent funds from going through.

“One purpose is to allow DOGE to advance a stated goal to block federal funds from reaching beneficiaries who do not align with the president’s political agenda,” the suit charges.

According to the suit, one DOGE employee who had access to, and the ability to modify, the databases was Mark Elez, 25, who resigned after the Wall Street Journal reported that he had made racist remarks in social media posts.

The lawsuit also alleges that the personal data on the computer systems has been fed into an “open-source Artificial Intelligence…system owned and controlled by a private third party without measures taken to ensure the privacy and security of U.S. citizens’ and residents’ data.”

The Treasury has denied that DOGE employees had access to anything but the source code of the data sets.

The attorneys general charged that DOGE’s access to the systems violated a host of federal laws, including the Privacy Act; the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how agency procedures are changed; and the eGovernment Act, which works to protect government information on the internet.

Another DOGE worker, Thomas Krause, the chief executive of several software companies who is unpaid in his government role, said that he was hired with the goal of “reducing and eliminating improper and fraudulent payments…and improving the accuracy of financial reporting.”