A US judge has issued an emergency order blocking Elon Musk’s government reform team from accessing personal and financial data stored at the Treasury Department. The order, issued by US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, prohibits “all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department” from accessing Treasury Department payment systems and other data.
This temporary order, which will remain in effect until a hearing on February 14, also mandates that anyone who has accessed data from the Treasury Department since Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20 must “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded.”
Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, is leading Trump’s federal cost-cutting efforts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The case against Trump, the Treasury Department, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was filed on Friday by attorneys general from 19 states. They allege that the administration violated the law by granting Musk’s DOGE team access to sensitive Treasury data.
Judge Engelmayer’s order emphasized that the states involved in the lawsuit would face “irreparable harm” without the injunction, citing the risks of sensitive information being exposed and the potential vulnerability of the systems to hacking.
Reports surfaced last week that Musk and his team had been accessing sensitive data at the Treasury Department, leading to controversy. An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” according to US media reports.
