NEW YORK – In a decision issued on Tuesday evening, a federal judge in New York granted more members of access to the Doge Service to the sensitive financial files held by the Treasury Department.
US District Judge Jeannette Vargas changed the preliminary injunction that it had set up on February 21 and has chosen to authorize four other DOGE staff to access the data of tax office services. The office is part of the Treasury department and oversees payments for federal agencies and manages public debt.
Vargas had previously ordered the Treasury Department to certify that the members of the DOGE team had undergone “appropriate training” for sensitive financial data and explain verification, security authorizations and mitigation procedures to reduce the risk of inappropriate disclosure.
On April 11, the judge granted a member of the Treasury Doge – Ryan Wunderly – Access team, noting that 54 pages of information provided by the Trump administration responded to the concerns of the complainants of “arbitrary and capricious driving” by the Doge team.
“In particular, the declarations clearly indicated that Wunderly had crossed the same verification, authorization and training procedures required by all other employees of the Treasury who granted access to BFS payment systems,” wrote the judge in Tuesday’s decision, who expanded this access to other staff: Thomas Krause, Linda Whitridge, Samuel Corcos and Todnam.
The Trump administration will no longer need to go to court each time it wants to add a new Doge name to the approved list, judged the judge.
“There is little utility for this court to work as a de facto treasury human resources officer whenever a new member of the team is integrated,” wrote Vargas.
But it has ceased to raise all restrictions, claiming that any additional member of the DOGE team needing access to files must follow the same training, verification and attenuation procedures, as well as supervised by the officials of the Treasury Department.
Tuesday’s order came in response to the legal challenge laid In February by a coalition of 19 attorney general, including the Prosecutor General of New York Letitia James.
James said in a statement At the time, the prosecution was deposited that Elon Musk, principal advisor of the president, and Doge “did not have the power to access the private information of the Americans and some of the most sensitive data in our country”.