The ruling, issued on May 27, represents a win for the Trump administration.
A team of four staffers with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can now access a Treasury Department system, a federal judge ruled on May 27 in a win for the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas allowed four employees with DOGE, which is associated with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, to access the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which is used by the federal government to distribute trillions of dollars in payments. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Democratic-led states.
The four members of DOGE with access to the Treasury system are Thomas Krause, Linda Whitridge, Samuel Corcos, and Todd Newnam, according to the judge, who also noted that another team member, Ryan Wunderly, was allowed to access it in April.
“There is little utility in having this Court function as Treasury’s de facto human resources officer each time a new team member is onboarded,” Vargas wrote.
Later in the ruling, the judge wrote that the four members of DOGE “have satisfied the conditions to be carved out of the definition of Restricted Personnel, [and] they shall be permitted access to Treasury Payment Systems on the same terms as Wunderly.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, however, Defendants are not required to obtain a judicial determination that a particular individual has satisfied the Training, Vetting and Mitigation Procedures before such person may be granted access to Treasury Payment Systems,” the order concluded.
The ruling marks a victory for DOGE and the Trump administration, which have faced a handful of lawsuits over the task force’s access to various government systems.
In the Treasury case, a group of Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit to block DOGE’s access, leading Vargas to issue a temporary injunction, but she allowed the task force to create a system to access the data with appropriate safeguards intact.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in February that she and 18 other Democratic attorneys general filed the lawsuit, according to a news release from her office.
