Attorneys for the Justice Department have agreed to temporarily restrict staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing…
The agreement came in response to a lawsuit accusing Treasury of committing an"unlawful action" by giving private info to Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The agreement comes after a group of union members and retirees filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department alleging that providing DOGE access to the federal government’s massive payment and collections system — and the personal data housed in it — violated federal privacy laws.
USAID announces nearly all direct hires will be placed on administrative leave"The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service," the proposed order states. The order would allow exceptions for two special government employees at the Treasury — Tom Krause and Marko Elez — saying they are permitted access"as needed" to perform their duties,"provided that such access to payment records will be 'read only.'"The suit contends newly minted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent should not have given DOGE access to the secure system. Bessent"decided behind closed doors to allow individuals not involved in the processing of the government’s financial transactions to root around in the Bureau’s records. Giving access to those records is unlawful," their filing said. "And the longer that the private information of Plaintiffs’ members remains accessible to unauthorized third parties, the greater the irreparable injury is. After all, as long as the sensitive data of Plaintiffs’ members remains accessible to Mr. Musk and other members of DOGE, the more opportunity there is for that data to be disclosed to still more unauthorized third parties, either accidentally or deliberately," they added. The lawsuit sought a temporary restraining order barring Treasury from"disclosing information about individuals" to DOGE, and directing the agency"to retrieve and safeguard any such information that has already been obtained by DOGE or individuals associated with it." At a hearing before Kollar-Kotelly Wednesday, a Justice Department lawyer denied that Treasury was sharing Americans' personal information. “The allegation that that information is being shared with third parties outside of Treasury is incorrect,” said the attorney, Bradley Humphreys. He said two DOGE appointees classified as special government employees, the same status held by Musk, have been granted access to the systems, but there is no plan for those two employees, or any other DOGE employee working at the Treasury Department, to share the information with Musk or anyone outside of Treasury.from Democrats, who have painted Musk as an unelected bureaucrat who is amassing outsized power and reshaping the federal government without the necessary checks and balances. "Let’s not mince words here: An unelected, unaccountable billionaire with expansive conflicts of interest, deep ties to China, and an indiscreet axe to grind against perceived enemies, is hijacking our nation’s most sensitive financial data system and its checkbook," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in a Senate floor speech on Wednesday.in the Trump administration as a"special government employee," according to a White House official, meaning he is not a full-time federal worker. That categorization also suggests Musk's employment period in the White House is limited to about a third of a year. On the first day of his second term, Trump renamed the U.S. Digital Service as the Department of Government Efficiency. He had previously announced that Musk would Musk has targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development for elimination, prompting the administration to grind humanitarian assistance to a near-halt. He has also turned his attention toward the other wings of the federal government, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Earlier on Wednesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that DOGE would have a role in his department as well, saying in a Three men indicted in Ohio in burglary of Bengals QB Joe Burrow’s home
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