Democratic attorneys general from 19 states have filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration over the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) access to sensitive, personal data belonging to Americans at the Treasury Department.
The lawsuit claims the Elon Musk-run agency illegally accessed the Treasury Department’s central payment system at the Trump administration’s behest.
On Thursday, the Treasury agreed to limit the Musk team’s access to its payment systems while a judge hears arguments in a previous lawsuit filed by a group of employee unions and retirees.
The lawsuit, filed Monday, claimed Musk’s team violated the law by being given ‘full access’ to the Treasury’s payment systems.
The payment systems have information about Americans’ Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits, tax refund information and much more.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told FOX Business Wednesday the concerns are not valid.
‘DOGE is not going to fail,’ he said. ‘They are moving a lot of people’s cheese here in the capital, and when you hear this squawking, then some status quo interest is not happy.
‘At the Treasury, our payment system is not being touched. We process 1.3 billion payments a year. There is a study being done — can we have more accountability, more accuracy, more traceability that the money is going where it is? But, in terms of payments being stopped, that is happening upstream at the department level.’
DOGE was launched to root out wasteful spending in the government, and it has already come close to closing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The lawsuit was filed in New York by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, a vocal Trump critic.
It includes attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
‘President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress,’ James said in a statement. ‘Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.’
Treasury officials on Wednesday denied violating privacy laws, saying only two members of the DOGE team had been given ‘read-only’ access to information in the payment systems.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
