New York Judge Paul Engelmayer on Saturday issued an injunction against the Trump Administration that says no political appointee — including the Secretary of the Treasury — may view or analyze the Department of Treasury data.
The decision by the federal judge throws a monkey wrench into DOGE — the project by the Trump Administration that is known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
Elon Musk is in charge of the project to ferret out waste, fraud, and abuse, and he has Trump’s permission to do so with his DOGE team of analysts.
But he doesn’t have the permission of the judge who agreed with 19 Democratic attorneys general who sued in federal court to keep the Trump Administration from finding out where the taxpayer dollars actually go.
Apparently, it’s not Trump who runs the executive branch. It’s federal judges. According to the Englemayer’s logic, even the president may not look at the Treasury data.
“The judge cites no law or logic to support this unprecedented order, because it defies both. The judge’s ruling is, in essence, that Scott Bessent simply occupies a ceremonial position without real power, like the King of England,” commented Charlie Kirk, a Trump supporter and leader of the Turning Point USA organization. “It forbids the elected government from accessing information about budget and finances. Instead, only the permanent, deep-state government can know what’s being spent. It means Scott Bessent’s subordinates have far more power than Scott Bessent does.”
Engelmayer, appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote in his decision that anyone appointed by Trump who has accessed information from the Treasury Department must immediately destroy all copies immediately.
Bessent on Thursday said, “There’s a lot of misinformation. These are Treasury employees [working with DOGE]. There’s no tinkering with the system, they have read-only access, can make no changes.”
Musk wrote his own explanation on X:
“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 audits almost impossible.
“- All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!
“- The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
“The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. 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.
“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.”
