According to court papers, a US judge issued an evacuation order early on Saturday to prevent Elon Musk’s state reform team from gaining access to personal and financial information stored at the Treasury Department.
The order of US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer forbids the access to” all political appointees, special government employees, and government personnel detailed from an organization outside the Treasury Department.”
Any person who has accessed information from the Treasury Department’s information since Donald Trump was elected president on January 20 is required to “immediately eliminate any and all copies of substance downloaded,” according to the temporary limiting order, which remains in effect until a February 14 reading.
Musk, the world’s richest person, is leading Trump’s federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency ( DOGE ).
Prosecutors basic from 19 state filed the lawsuit against Trump, the Department of the Treasury, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday.
The attorneys general claimed that the administration broke the law by allowing Musk’s DOGE employees to access delicate Treasury Department data.
According to Engelmayer’s ruling, the states that sued do” face irreparable damage in the absence of injunctive relief.”
” That is both because of the increased threat that the devices in question will be more susceptible than before to hacking and the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information,” he wrote.
Last year, reports that Musk and his team were accessing vulnerable information stored at the Treasury Department sparked controversy.
According to US media reports, the DOGE player’s access to federal payment systems is” the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has previously faced” according to an inside assessment from the Treasury.
This story was published from a syndicated serve, with the exception of the title.