Federal Government to Restrict DOGE Access to Treasury Department Systems: Filing

Elon Musk in Washington on Nov. 13, 2024. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The federal government will, for now, restrict the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) access to U.S. Department of Treasury payment systems, government lawyers said in a Feb. 5 court filing.

“The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” they said in a proposed order they are asking a federal judge to enter.

Exceptions include several special government employees, whose access would be “read-only,” the lawyers said.

After Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted DOGE access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, through which the bulk of federal payments are made.

Lawmakers from the Democratic Party called for the access to be revoked, and a coalition of unions on Wednesday sued to block the access.

“At every step, DOGE is violating multiple laws, from constitutional limits on executive power, to laws protecting civil servants from arbitrary threats and adverse action, to crucial protections for government data collected and stored on hundreds of millions of Americans,” the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, stated.

In a motion for a temporary restraining order that would enjoin Treasury Department employees from disclosing information to DOGE, and require government officials to “retrieve and safeguard” information that has already been accessed by DOGE, lawyers for the unions said that an order was necessary to protect the privacy of union members until the case is resolved.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is overseeing the case, heard arguments for and against the motion during a hearing on Wednesday. After hearing arguments, the judge sent the parties a proposed order that would defer ruling on the motion and order government officials “to take steps to preserve the status quo with respect to access to systems of records maintained by Defendant Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” which is part of the Treasury Department.

The parties each submitted proposed edits to the proposed order, and the parties reconvened to discuss the competing proposals. There were lingering disputes, the judge said, requiring additional time to meet and confer.

If the parties ended up agreeing, she said, they should file a motion to enter an order to preserve the status quo.

Within hours, the parties filed the proposed order that would bar most people from DOGE from accessing the payment systems.

“By mutual agreement, the parties respectfully ask the Court to enter the proposed order,” government officials and lawyers for the plaintiffs told the judge.

The judge has not yet signed off on the proposed order.

DOGE has been targeting various agencies for reduction or elimination, including the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Businessman Elon Musk, a special government employee who runs DOGE, described it as “a wood chipper for bureaucracy” on his social media platform X.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, on the same day the proposed order was entered, said on X that he had talked to the DOGE team and that they were “going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.”

Musk said that the DOGE team “will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system.”