The Trump administration agreed in a late-night court filing Wednesday not to expand access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system for “special government employees” working with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The filing followed a series of phone hearings for the lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The case was brought by current and retired federal employee unions that seek to block allegedly unlawful access to government employee data and protect any data that the Department of Government Efficiency workers had accessed. Several lawsuits, as well as Democrats in Congress, have criticized the access given to allies of the Elon Musk-led DOGE, claiming it threatens Americans’ privacy and opens payments up to alteration.
Justice Department attorney Bradley Humphreys said on the calls that two “special government employees” at Treasury, Tom Krause and Marko Elez, have been given read-only access to that system in order to work with DOGE.
