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A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked Elon Musk and his team from accessing the US Treasury department’s payments data, warning that it risked leading to the disclosure of sensitive information.
The order issued on Saturday morning dealt a fresh legal blow to the technology billionaire and his closest allies’ push to comb through federal payments in a bid to slash US government costs.
The court’s move came in response to a legal challenge from 19 Democratic state attorneys-general, who argued that Musk’s unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency” unit, which was set up by President Donald Trump, should not have access to personal information relating to millions of Americans.
In the court order, Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York wrote that the “new policy” presented a risk of “disclosure of sensitive and confidential information” and a “heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking”.
He ordered that any “political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee” from outside the US Treasury should be restricted from accessing the agency’s data, and should destroy any information they had obtained since Trump’s inauguration last month.
The order is expected to remain in place at least until a court hearing which has been set for February 14.
Musk hit back, accusing Engelmayer of being “an activist posing as a judge” on his social media platform X.
He also lashed out at Daniel Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York, who demanded that Musk confirm he would comply with the court’s order and destroy any data his team acquired.
“We don’t have any personal data of Americans, you corrupt moron,” Musk wrote on X, responding to Goldman.
The attorneys-general who brought the case said the order was an important victory. “Now Americans can trust that Musk — the world’s richest man — and his friends will not have free rein over their personal information while our lawsuit proceeds,” said Letitia James, the New York attorney-general, in a statement.
The judge’s order highlights how the wide-ranging push by Trump and Musk to selectively slash government spending is facing its biggest hurdles in court, as the administration tests the limits of executive power as well as America’s privacy laws.
Earlier this week, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled that outsiders should not be granted access to the Treasury’s payments data, in response to a separate legal challenge brought by representatives of retirees and government employees.
The White House has tried to quell fears that Musk, who has been designated a “special government employee”, is running a rogue operation. But Democrats are increasingly sounding alarm bells about the activities of his “Doge”.
“Doge’s actions represent a two-front invasion of Americans’ financial security and privacy,” Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate finance committee, wrote in a letter to the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, which manages government pensions for millions of Americans.
The Treasury department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
