President Donald Trump’s administration is being sued over Elon Musk’s alleged “large and unprecedented” intrusion into the American authorities’s fee techniques. The go well with, filed in a Washington, DC federal courtroom Monday night by the advocacy group Public Citizen, requires the courtroom to cease the “illegal, ongoing, systematic, and steady disclosure of non-public and monetary data … to Elon Musk and different members of the so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), or to some other individual.”
Public Citizen filed the go well with towards the Treasury Department on behalf of the Alliance for Retired Americans, American Federation of Government Employees, and the Service Employees International Union days after reviews emerged that Musk and DOGE had gained entry to federal fee techniques — and to thousands and thousands of Americans’ Social Security numbers. The go well with claims that the Treasury Department, led by lately appointed Secretary Scott Bessent, violated the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code’s rules surrounding taxpayer data by letting Musk and DOGE entry these techniques.
“People who should share data with the federal authorities shouldn’t be compelled to share data with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE,’” the grievance reads . “And federal legislation says they don’t have to.”
Lawmakers have additionally known as for investigations into Musk’s obvious takeover of the Treasury Department. Over the weekend, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-WA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) wrote to Bessent demanding to know whether or not he had given Musk “full entry” to the federal authorities’s fee techniques.
“To put it bluntly, these fee techniques merely can’t fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them dangers extreme injury to our nation and the financial system,” wrote Wyden, the rating member of the Senate Committee on Finance. “I can consider no good motive why political operators who’ve demonstrated a blatant disregard for the legislation would want entry to those delicate, mission-critical techniques.”
Wyden’s letter ended with an inventory of questions for Bessent, together with whether or not officers related to Musk or DOGE have requested or been granted entry to the Fiscal Service’s fee techniques. Wyden additionally requested about what data safety measures had been taken to make sure that Musk and DOGE’s entry to authorities fee techniques “doesn’t lead to hackers and overseas spies breaching or in any other case getting access to the Fiscal Service’s fee techniques.”
In a separate letter, Warren requested what safeguards are in place to make sure entry to those techniques isn’t abused, in addition to what measures are being taken to guard Americans’ delicate knowledge, together with Social Security numbers. Warren requested that Bessent reply to her questions by February seventh, whereas Wyden requested a response by February twelfth. Neither letter specifies what occurs if Bessent refuses to reply.
Bradley Moss, a nationwide safety lawyer, instructed The Verge that the administration may face different authorized challenges to DOGE’s makes an attempt to intestine the federal paperwork. Organizations whose funding is lower because of the freeze in USAID funds may sue, as may federal workers who get purged by DOGE. Congress, too, may problem DOGE’s efforts to “impound funds that Congress appropriated to specific businesses, contracts, or packages,” Moss mentioned.
“President Trump is clearly in a ‘simply do it and be legends’ section,” Moss mentioned. “He is pushing all of the boundaries to see what he can accomplish earlier than anybody can legally cease him, if ever. It stays to be seen if the courts will verify his authoritarian actions, as it’s clear Republican majorities in Congress won’t.”
