Judge blocks Musk team access to Treasury Department records

Elon Musk on Capitol Hill on 5 December 2024

A federal judge has blocked Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) from accessing the personal financial data of millions of Americans in Treasury Department records, according to court documents.

US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction on Saturday to prohibit access, ordering Musk and his team to immediately destroy any copies of records.

The move comes after 19 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration after Doge, a cost-cutting initiative led by Musk, was given access to the records.

They argued access for Musk, a special government employee, and Doge, which is not an official government department, violated federal law.

There was no immediate comment from the White House, President Donald Trump or Musk.

The Democratic state attorneys general sued Trump, the Treasury Department and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday.

Engelmayers order, issued early on Saturday, said the states would face irreparable harm without immediate 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, the order read.

The order restrains the defendants from granting access to Treasury Department records containing personally identifiable or confidential information to special government employees, political appointees, and other employees from outside the department.

The injunction restricts anyone else from accessing those records other than civil servants who need to do so for their work at the Bureau of Fiscal Services and have passed background checks.

The judge further ordered any person among those restricted to immediately destroy copies of records.

The conditions will remain in place until the next court hearing on 14 February.

Tech titan and billionaire Musk has been heavily involved in upheaval during Trumps second term, with Doge leading major cuts at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes billions of dollars of aid globally.