Elon Musk’s DOGE is under fire after breaking an important treasury policy by emailing personal information to a Trump admin.
More details were revealed about the ongoing lawsuit against the US Treasury Department after court documents showed that a 25-year-old DOGE employee had violated the policy.
The staffer, named Marko Elez, is a worker for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is headed up by Musk.
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According to a report by Bloomberg, it was found that Elez had sent a spreadsheet containing personal information to two members of the Trump administration.
Elez is also a former employee at two of Musk’s other companies, SpaceX and X, formerly Twitter.
During his time at DOGE, the ex-staffer was tasked with the job of combing through the Treasury payments system.
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Last month Elez resigned from his post after racist social media posts were linked to him, although DOGE has since rehired him and he now works at the Social Security Administration.
In February, 19 state attorney generals sued the Treasury Department over the access DOGE has been given to its systems.
The Treasury Department has since claimed that Elez’s ‘read and write’ access to the payment system was a ‘mistake’.
Since the incident, a court order has limited what access DOGE has, although the government is trying to modify this, according to Bloomberg.
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In a court filing that the Treasury Department issued on Friday (March 14), it claims that any analysis of Elez’s laptop and email account found that he ‘did not make any alterations or changes to Bureau payment systems’.
However, he did email a spreadsheet with confidential information, including a name, the transaction type and an amount of money.
This was sent to two unnamed officials within the General Services Administration and violated the department’s policy by not encrypting the document or getting proper approval beforehand.
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In another court document sent on Friday, the states that are suing the Treasury Department wrote that the results of the analysis on Elez’s actions ‘do nothing to allay any of the concerns expressed by the court in its opinion about the rushed and chaotic nature of the Treasury DOGE Team onboarding process’.
Musk’s department has been at the center of controversy since the start of the year when President Trump made his return to the White House.
With Musk being an unelected outside advisor, many have questioned the level of access and influence he has on the government.
The White House has claimed that Musk has no decision-making authority.