Article by: Mehdi Mahir
Published on: February 8, 2025, 11:55 AM
Reading time: 2 minutes
A US federal judge, Paul A. Engelmayer, issued an emergency order on Saturday, February 8, to block the control of the US Treasury payment system by the Government Efficiency Commission (Doge), led by Elon Musk. In this order, Judge Engelmayer prohibited access to data stored in the US Treasury for “all politically appointed individuals,” “all special government agents,” and “all government employees assigned to an agency outside the Treasury.”
This temporary order, in effect until a hearing scheduled for February 14, also stipulates that anyone who has accessed data from the Department of Finance archives since Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20 must “immediately destroy all copies of downloaded material.”
Elon Musk’s Collaborators Took Control of US Treasury Payment System
Elon Musk’s collaborators, appointed by Donald Trump as the head of the Doge, recently took control of the US Treasury payment system. This action was criticized by Democratic lawmakers as being “extremely dangerous.” Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, justified this move by stating, “The only way to stop fraud and waste of taxpayers’ money is to be able to track payment flows and block suspicious transactions for examination.”
A Violation of Law and Internal Threat
The case was brought to court by prosecutors from 19 US states, who asserted that the Trump administration violated the law by expanding access to sensitive Treasury data to Doge commission members, tasked with reducing public spending. According to an internal memo from the US Treasury, the Doge team’s access to federal payment systems poses “the greatest internal threat the fiscal service bureau has ever faced,” as reported by US media outlets.