Attorney General James and 11 Attorneys General Release Joint Statement on Lawsuit to Protect Americans from Elon Musk’s DOGE

 

New York Attorney General Letitia James today led a coalition of 11 other attorneys general in releasing the following statement ahead of a court hearing in their case against the Trump administration for illegally granting Elon Musk and members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to Americans’ private information: 

“Last week, Elon Musk and his team got into our nation’s central payment system in the Treasury Department, giving them unauthorized access to the Social Security numbers, bank account information, and other private data of tens of millions of Americans.

“To protect our states’ residents, we filed a lawsuit to stop the madness. Just a few hours later, we won a court order blocking Musk and DOGE from accessing Americans’ personal information and ordering the destruction of all the copies of records they had obtained.  

“Elon Musk may be the richest man in the world, but the law is clear: he has no authority to access your private information. The Constitution gives Congress – not the President – primary control over federal spending." 

On February 7, Attorney General James led a coalition of 18 other attorneys general in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop the unauthorized disclosure of Americans’ private information. Attorney General James’ lawsuit asserts that the Trump administration illegally provided Elon Musk and DOGE unauthorized access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system, and therefore to Americans’ most sensitive personal information. On the morning of February 8, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York granted Attorney General James’ motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking Elon Musk and his DOGE employees from accessing Americans’ most sensitive personal information and ordering them to immediately destroy any and all copies of records they had already obtained. 

Attorney General James and the coalition are today seeking a preliminary injunction to continue to bar the unauthorized access to Americans’ personal data through the Treasury’s payment system. 

Joining Attorney General James in releasing this statement are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Oregon.