A federal judge early Saturday morning blocked Elon Musk’s highly controversial Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from further access to a sensitive and closely guarded Treasury Department payment system, warning of “irreparable harm” presented by the threat to the personal and financial data of millions of Americans.
In an emergency order that followed from a lawsuit filed by 19 state attorneys general on Friday, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said the Treasury Department, in addition to suspending Musk and his team from access, must “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any.”
In the coalition’s lawsuit, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the states argued that allowing DOGE personnel — who have been characterized as far-right libertarian “goons” and a “demolition crew” intent on gutting federal agencies from the inside out — access to the Treasury system was unlawful in the first place and could give them the ability “to block federal funds to states and programs providing health care, childcare, and other critical services” — none of which they are authorized to do.
Judge Engelmayer, in his decision, said the named defendants in the suit — President Donald Trump, his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and the Treasury Department — will be compelled to show cause at a hearing on February 14 before a separate judge presiding over an existing challenge to DOGE’s access to the system.
In a statement following the ruling, James said: “This morning, we won a court order blocking Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, from accessing Americans’ private data. Musk and his DOGE employees must destroy all records they’ve obtained. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: no one is above the law.”
Under the order, as The Washington Post reports, “the Trump administration is prohibited from giving access to political appointees, special government employees or government employees that are not assigned to the Treasury Department.”
On Friday, Wired reported that an internal agency at Treasury had assessed the DOGE personnel placed inside the department as “an insider threat.”
“There is ongoing litigation, congressional legislation, and widespread protests relating to DOGE’s access to Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” reads a section of an email from the internal agency reviewed by the news outlet.
“If DOGE members have any access to payment systems,” the email continued, “we recommend suspending that access immediately and conducting a comprehensive review of all actions they may have taken on these systems.”
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