Niamh Shackleton
A lawsuit has lead to an Elon Musk-headed organization unable to access billions of dollars worth of cash.
In recent days, it was reported that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had been granted access to America's Treasury Department payment system.
DOGE is a temporary organization set up by President Trump that to 'dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies'.
He shared the news of its creation in November and named Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the two people that will lead it.
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Since then, it's been reported that the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, agreed to allow a team who works under DOGE to oversee the Treasury's payment system, which is charge of distributing things like Americans’ tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments and federal employees’ salaries - all of which equates to a flow of more than $6 trillion.
It's believed these team members in question have been able to access the critical payment system since January 20 (the day Trump was sworn into office), but a federal judge has now temporarily halted this.
Today (February 8), US District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued the order in question, which also tells DOGE members to destroy any downloaded information from the payment system, CNN reports.
Englemayer said of his decision that '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'.
A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for Friday, February 14.
The order comes after 19 State Attorney Generals filed a suit against the Trump administration and accused DOGE of engaging in unauthorized access to sensitive information.
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the suit yesterday, CBS News reports, with Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin also joining the petition.
Part of the suit reads: "Nineteen States bring this action against Treasury, the Treasury Secretary, and the President to put an end to this new dangerous expanded access policy."
It also states that 'only a limited number of career civil servants at BFS with appropriate security clearance had access to the BFS payment systems' before DOGE was given access.
With this in mind, there are fears that the DOGE members' conduct 'presents a unique security risk to the States and State residents whose data is held'.
In response to people's concerns, the Treasury previously insisted that DOGE members have 'read only' access, and that they cannot tamper with the payment system's expenditures.