NY AG Letitia James Slaps Trump Admin And Elon Musk With Lawsuit Over Alleged Treasury Data Breach

James and 11 attorneys general say Trump lacks authority to control spending via DOGE.

On Valentine’s Day, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong continued arguing that Elon Musk and his cronies at the Department of Government Efficiency are behind the largest data breach in U.S. history.

According to CBS News, over a dozen states have joined a lawsuit challenging DOGE and the Trump administration’s authority to access sensitive Treasury Department records, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and biometric information.

“We’re talking about Social Security numbers, we’re talking about banking information, we’re talking about addresses, biometric information. We stand together to stop Elon Musk and his army of tech bro-wannabe stormtroopers from tearing up the Treasury Department,” Tong said at a news conference ahead of their court appearance.

In a joint statement shared with BLACK ENTERPRISE, James and 11 other attorneys general argued that Trump has no legal or Constitutional authority to control spending through DOGE or any other apparatus.

“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,” reads the statement.

The statement continued, “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.”

The statement concluded, “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.”

In the legal proceedings, the Justice Department argued that DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department is not unlawful.

“There’s nothing unlawful about the Treasury carrying out the priorities of a new administration using special government employees,” the Justice Department’s lawyers argued in response to the 19 attorneys generals’ argument that Musk’s group had no lawful reason to access the sensitive information of United States citizens.

According to The New York Times, although the judge presiding over the case has not yet issued a ruling, she did extend an earlier order restricting Musk and DOGE’s access to Treasury Department systems.

An official ruling in the matter is not likely to be issued for months, and the attorneys generals’ suit is one of dozens challenging the authority of the Trump administration to issue sweeping changes largely through executive orders in the month he has been in power.

According to Yesha Yadav, a law professor and associate dean at Vanderbilt University, the heart of the legal dispute is “the nerve center of our payment systems. ” The importance of these systems “cannot be overstated,” Yadav said.

Yadav continued, “We’ve never imagined the U.S. government being in potential default in these kinds of domestic obligations. This is about as precious of a data source that we have.”

For that reason, Jacob Leibenluft, who formerly held senior positions at the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget under President Biden, told the outlet that these systems require those within them to “operate with extreme care.”

Leibenluft concluded his comments with a grave analysis of the danger posed by Musk and his team. “I think there are many reasons to doubt that this particular team is doing so.”