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Musk protested against a US judge’s order halting his DOGE team from accessing personal and financial data stored at the Treasury Department. The DOGE is tasked with cutting federal costs.
The Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) is led by Elon Musk. (Photo Credits: x)
elonTech billionaire Elon Musk protested against US District Judge Paul A Engelmayer’s order blocking his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team from accessing personal and financial data stored at the Treasury Department and claimed widespread fraud in government entitlement payments.
Engelmayer’s order restricts giving access to Treasury Department payment systems and other data to “all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department.” The case was brought against Trump, the Department of the Treasury and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday by attorneys general from 19 states.
Musk, the world’s richest person who is leading Trump’s cost-cutting efforts under the DOGE, responded to the order with a barrage of posts on his X platform, accusing “corrupt judges” of “protecting corruption”.
Musk said the DOGE team and the US Treasury Department agreed on several issues, including for all outgoing government payments to have a payment categorisation code and all payments to include a rationale for the payment in the comment field.
“It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already! Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious<‘ he said.
To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:– Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025
Musk further said, “When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.”
In response to a tweet, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said nobody in the Treasury Department had cared enough before about the widespread fraud, saying the working level people wanted to expose these activities but were stopped by prior management.
“Everything at Treasury was geared towards complain minimisation. People we receive money don’t complain, but people who don’t receive money (especially fraudsters) complain very loudly, so the fraud was allowed to continue,” he said.
Nobody in Treasury management cared enough before. I do want to credit the working level people in Treasury who have wanted to do this for many years, but have been stopped by prior management.Everything at Treasury was geared towards complain minimization. People we receive…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025
The temporary restrictive order, which remains in effect until a February 14 hearing, also says any such person who has accessed data from the Treasury Department’s records since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president on January 20 must “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded.”
Engelmayer’s order said the states that sued would “face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief”, adding that the “new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information”.
Musk ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive data stored at the Treasury Department. An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” US media reported.
(with agency inputs)
- Location :
Washington D.C., United States of America (USA)
