Treasury agrees to interim ban on Elon Musk's DOGE accessing the financial data of millions of Americans

• The Treasury agreed on Wednesday night not to share millions of Americans' sensitive data with DOGE.
• The agreement must still be approved by a DC judge, and strictly limits data sharing.
• Earlier Wednesday, a Treasury lawyer told the judge no one at DOGE had direct access to the data.

The Treasury Department has agreed that it would not directly share the personal financial data of millions of Americans with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

The agreement, struck between the Treasury and a group of plaintiffs representing government unions on Wednesday night, must still be approved by US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who sits in Washington, DC.

The judge had asked for language limiting the sharing earlier Wednesday, during an hourlong court hearing, at which a government lawyer said only two Musk allies, both of them now Treasury employees, had any access to the data.

Under the proposed language agreed upon by the two sides Wednesday night, those two Musk allies would continue to have read-only access to Treasury records maintained by the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

The two were identified in court as Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause and Marko Elez, who has worked at SpaceX and X, formerly Twitter.

Beyond Krause and Elez, the Fiscal Service records could only be accessed by Treasury employees who have "a need for the record or system of records in the performance of their duties," according to a draft of the proposed order filed for the judge's approval on Wednesday night.

The access limits would stand in effect while the union groups' lawsuit proceeds.

The contention that Krause and Elez were the only Musk allies with any access to the records was met with skepticism earlier Wednesday by one of the lawyers seeking to ensure the data's privacy.

"We remain concerned that the records — the personal information of our association's members — are still compromised," said the lawyer, Nandan Joshi, who represents three unions in a lawsuit filed against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday.

"If there's a compromise, it's impossible to unbreak the egg," Joshi said.

Treasury officials have so far not been forthcoming on what access the two Musk allies have to the data, Joshi told the judge.

"We don't take it as a given that two individuals by themselves, without outside assistance, will manage the supposed task of rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse in a system that handles over a billion payments a year, and trillions and trillions of dollars of payments," he said.

The lawyer representing Bessent and the Treasury Department, Bradley P. Humphreys, countered during the hearing that only Elez had direct access to the data and that "he briefs and reports to Mr. Krause, who does not have direct access."

"Only those two individuals have been given any access," Humphreys said, adding that as special government employees of the Treasury Department, both were subject to federal ethics and confidentiality requirements.

Asked by the judge if Krause and Elez had distributed the fiscal data to "anybody else," Humphreys said "As far as we are aware, no, they have not, outside the Treasury Department."

That includes Musk, the lawyer added.

"Does he have access to it? Can he go look at it? Has he gone and looked at it?" the judge asked.

"No, your honor. To our knowledge he has not," Humphreys answered.

The Bessent lawsuit challenges what it calls the Treasury's ongoing release to DOGE of sensitive data from anyone who pays federal taxes, collects Social Security, or otherwise engages financially with the government.

Lawyers for the unions asked to block the sharing of this Treasury data with DOGE while the lawsuit proceeds.

The Treasury and Bessent "have unlawfully implemented and are unlawfully maintaining a system that enables records and information about individuals to be accessed and disclosed to unauthorized parties," the unions argue in court documents.

"The scale of the intrusion into individuals' privacy is massive and unprecedented," the unions say.

The lawsuit was filed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, and the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO. It alleges that releasing the names and financial details of people in the Treasury's database would violate federal data-privacy law and Internal Revenue Service regulations.

February 6, 2025 — This story was updated to include details for a second hearing held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, and to include an agreement reached later that night.