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A Federal Judge in New York has temporarily blocked Elon Musk and his team to enter the US Treasury Department payments, warning that it risked led to the discovery of sensitive information.
The order issued on Saturday morning dealt with a new legal blow to the technology billionaire and the push of his closest allies to combine through federal payments in an effort to reduce US government costs.
The court’s measure came in response to a legal challenge by the 19 Prosecutors General of the Democratic State, who argued that the unofficial unit of the “Department of Efficiency of the Government” of Musk, which was created by President Donald Trump, should not have access in personal information about millions of Americans.
In the court order, Judge Paul Engelmayer of the southern district of New York wrote that “New Politics” posed a risk of “detecting sensitive and confidential information” and “increased risk that the systems in question will be tangible than before to hacker ”.
He ordered that every “political appointed, special government employee and every government employee” from outside the US Treasury should be limited to enter the agency data and destroy any information they had received since Trump’s inauguration past.
The order is expected to remain in place at least up to one court hearing scheduled for February 14.
Musk was hit, accusing Engelmayer of being “an activist posing as a judge” on his social media platform X.
He also clashed with Daniel Goldman, a Democratic congressman from New York, who demanded that Musm confirm that he would respect the court order and destroy any data that his team won.
“We don’t have any personal data of Americans, you corrupt Moron,” Musk wrote on X, responding to Goldman.
The lawyers general who brought the case said the order was an important victory. “Now Americans can believe that Musk-the richest man in the world-and his friends will not have their own personal information for free while our lawsuit continues,” said Lettitia James, the Attorney General of New York in a statement.
The judge’s order underlines how Trump and Musk’s extensive push selectively reduces government spending is facing its biggest obstacles in court, as the administration tests the limits of executive power as well as the laws of American privacy.
At the beginning of this week, a Federal Court in the Colombia district decided that foreigners should not be given access to Treasury Pay data, in response to a particular legal challenge brought by representatives of pensioners and government employees .
The White House has tried to quench the fear that Musk, who is assigned a “special government employee”, is conducting a fraudulent operation. But the Democrats are increasingly sounding the alarm bells about his “Doge” activities.
“Doge’s actions represent a two-fry invasion of financial security and the intimacy of Americans,” wrote Ron Wyden, the Supreme Democrat in the Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to the Social Security Administration Commissioner, which administers pensions of government for millions of Americans.
The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a comment request.
