Trump Argues That Courts Cannot Block Elon Musk’s DOGE Team From Treasury Systems
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued late Sunday that a court order blocking Elon Musk’s aides from entering the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems impinged on the president’s absolute powers over the executive branch, which they argued the courts could not usurp.
The filing by the administration came in response to a lawsuit filed Friday night by 19 attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James, who had won a temporary pause on Saturday. The lawsuit said the Trump administration’s policy of allowing appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain sensitive information such as bank details and social security numbers, was unlawful.
Members of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not actually a department, have been combing through the databases to find expenditures to cut. The lawsuit says the initiative challenges the Constitution’s separation of powers, under which Congress determines government spending.
A U.S. district judge in Manhattan, Paul A. Engelmayer, on Saturday ordered any such officials who had been granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.”
Judge Engelmayer said in an emergency order that the officials’ access heightened the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking. He set a hearing in the case for Friday.
Federal lawyers defending Mr. Trump — as well as the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the Treasury Department — called the order “markedly overboard” and said the court should dismiss the injunction, or at least modify his order.
They argued that the order violated the Constitution by ignoring the separation of powers and severing the executive branch’s right to appoint its own employees. The restriction, they wrote, “draws an impermissible and anti-constitutional distinction” between civil servants and political appointees working in the Treasury Department.
The filing followed warning shots over the weekend. Vice President JD Vance declared that the courts and judges aren’t allowed “to control the executive’s legitimate power,” although American courts have long engaged in the practice of judicial review.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump called the ruling by Judge Engelmayer a “disgrace” and said that “No judge should, frankly, be allowed to make that kind of a decision.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
