Musk’s Coup at the Treasury Has Been Ruled Illegal. Will That Stop Him?

After Donald Trump’s election in November, big-time donor and billionaire adviser Elon Musk began to outline his plans to slash government spending through something called the “department of government efficiency” (DOGE), a name referencing a 2010s dog meme and a cryptocurrency created as a joke in 2013.

But it wasn’t clear exactly what form Musk’s task force would take until Inauguration Day, when Donald Trump issued an executive order repurposing the existing U.S. Digital Service as the “U.S. DOGE Service,” and tasking it with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The order further stated that small DOGE teams would be embedded in various federal departments, where they would have access to “all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

Legally, this makes DOGE something like an IT task force — and notably, not a real government agency or department. Officially, Musk and DOGE aides are “special government employees,” a designation generally used for part-time expert consultants working no more than 130 days of the year. In fact, in an ongoing court case against Musk, the White House administration alleged on February 17 that “Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” and that “Mr Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.”

But that’s on paper. Over the ensuing weeks, Trump and Musk have continued to demonstrate that they have no respect for rules, laws or the Constitution. Musk is running DOGE as if it were the most powerful part of government — putting officials on leave, accessing private data, shutting down federal agencies and overriding spending authorized by Congress.

On February 10, New York Magazine identified 18 agencies and departments that DOGE has accessed, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Defense Department, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Social Security Administration (SSA) and Veterans Affairs (VA).

“There is not one single entity holding Musk accountable,” historian Douglas Brinkley told The New York Times. “It’s a harbinger of the destruction of our basic institutions.” A federal official witnessing the DOGE takeover warned the paper: “Before Congress and the courts can respond, Elon Musk will have rolled up the whole government.”

One of DOGE’s most high-profile and terrifying breaches was of the Treasury Department, which manages the country’s finances by collecting taxes, paying bills and producing money.

In late January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent allowed DOGE members to access the Treasury’s payment system, a unit known as the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). This previously little-known but hugely important office processed nearly 1.3 billion payments in fiscal year 2023, totaling $5.4 trillion, including tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments and federal salaries. BFS is overseen by nonpartisan career employees who are highly trained and subject to monitoring and oversight.

DOGE affiliates allegedly began requesting access to BFS in December, according to The New York Times,but were repeatedly denied by David Lebryk, Treasury’s most senior career civil servant. But after inauguration, the pressure grew. On January 24, Trump’s newly appointed Treasury chief of staff emailed a group of department officials, stating that BFS access should be given to Tom Krause, a software executive and Musk ally affiliated with DOGE, so that Krause could pause USAID payments. Again, Lebryk pushed back, noting that the Treasury does not have the legal authority to turn off authorized payments.

Within days, Lebryk was pushed out of his job, and Bessent granted BFS access to Krause and the DOGE team.

Outsiders accessing this closely guarded payment system could lead to several major crises. First, Musk and his aides have gained access to the private data of individuals, including bank account information and social security numbers, violating Americans’ privacy and opening the door for cyber-attacks. It also means Musk, a walking conflict of interest, now holds sensitive information about his competitors and their government contracts.

But perhaps most concerning of all, experts fear the rogue DOGE team will use its access to stop congressionally approved payments that do not align with Trump’s goals — like it already attempted to do with USAID payments.

When news of DOGE’s actions at the Treasury spread, opposition quickly mounted. On February 3, two labor unions and the Alliance for Retired Americans sued Bessent, Treasury and the BFS for illegally disclosing individuals’ sensitive information to Musk, a private citizen. “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” stated the complaint. “People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE.’ And federal law says they do not have to.”

The following day, on February 4, protesters outside the Treasury were joined by congressional Democrats, who were denied entry to the building.

Trump’s Treasury Department repeatedly attempted to assure politicians that DOGE’s access to the BFS payment system was “read-only,” meaning agents could not make changes, and that no payments had been canceled. But these claims drew skepticism: After all, the Treasury chief of staff had sent emails about plans to stop USAID payments, and Musk repeatedly boasted on social media about allegedly cancelling payments. “Why on earth should we believe that, particularly when he is saying the exact opposite, loudly and repeatedly for everyone to see?” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, asked Politico.

Sure enough, as WIRED soon revealed, the access was not read-only. A 25-year-old “special government employee” named Marko Elez did, in fact, have write access. In a court filing on February 11, Treasury officials walked back their earlier denials, stating that Elez had “mistakenly” and “briefly” had the power to alter the payments database. The filings also confirmed that the DOGE team had initially sought BFS access with plans to cancel USAID payments.

Many experts say the access is concerning either way. “It’s a distinction without a difference,” one source told WIRED, pointing out that Elez should not have had “access to this almost $5 trillion payment flow, even if it’s ‘read-only.’ None of this should be happening.” Elez temporarily resigned from DOGE after the Wall Street Journal pointed to a series of racist social media posts from his accounts — but Musk has since reinstated him.

On February 13, the Treasury’s Department’s Office of Inspector General informed Democratic senators that it had launched an audit into ongoings at BFS, including studying the “adequacy of controls in place” for granting access to the payment systems and for making sure payments are made in accordance with the law, as well as reviewing the so-called fraudulent payments DOGE claims to have found.

“Elon Musk and DOGE can’t be allowed to creep on Americans’ most sensitive data as they operate in the shadows,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in a statement, following the Inspector General announcement. “This is an important step, and inspectors general must be free to pursue their investigations without interference.”

The Inspector General letter noted that, “given the breadth of this effort,” the audit will likely take until August — noting that the Office will provide interim updates if it uncovers critical issues.

Meanwhile, on February 6, in the lawsuit brought by the unions, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly temporarily banned Special Government Employees from accessing Treasury payment records and systems. She exempted Krause and Elez, who were permitted continued read-only access.

In another lawsuit filed on February 7, 19 state attorneys general argue that allowing DOGE to rifle through the Treasury payments system is causing “ongoing harm to States and their residents.” The following day, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued an emergency order, banning any “political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department” from accessing Treasury systems containing confidential information, and ordering them to immediately delete any downloaded material. Another judge extended that order on February 14.

In his order, Judge Engelmayer noted that current policies presented a risk of “disclosure of sensitive and confidential information,” as well as “the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”

As the two lawsuits progress — along with many others seeking to block various executive orders — it has yet to be seen if Trump, Musk and their allies will obey court orders. Defiance would be unprecedented: As The New York Times pointed out recently, a 2018 Harvard Law Review article could not find any instances of “open presidential defiance of court orders in the years since 1865.”

Yet, Republican leaders are performatively pretending that the flurry of federal injunctions and temporary restraining orders represent judicial overreach. The White House accused Judge Engelmayer of being an “activist judge,” and Musk called for his impeachment. Vice President J.D. Vance made the wildly incorrect claim on social media that “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

The administration’s comments drew sharp criticism from the American Bar Association (ABA), which said these claims “create a risk to the physical security of judges and have no place in our society.” To disobey court orders, it continued, is to “threaten the very foundation of our constitutional system.”

Yet many fear that is exactly where Trump is headed. In fact, he may have already started. On January 31, a federal judge in Rhode Island issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the Trump administration from freezing federal payments. But on February 10, just three weeks into his presidency, the judge ruled that the Trump administration has continued to freeze some federal funds — in blatant violation of the order.