The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, run by President Trump’s billionaire adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has gained access to sensitive Treasury data including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems, according to two people familiar with the situation.
The move by DOGE, a Trump administration task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations, means it could have wide leeway to access important taxpayer data, among other things. Advocacy groups on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department, calling the data sharing illegal.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented,” said those in the complaint filed by several plaintiffs including the Public Citizen Litigation Group, the Alliance for Retired Americans and the Service Employees International Union. “People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE.’ And federal law says they do not have to.”
The New York Times first reported the news of the group’s access of the massive federal payment system. The two people who spoke to The Associated Press spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon, on Friday sent a letter to Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressing concern that “officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs.”
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