The U.S. Treasury Department has been accused of violating federal law by allowing Elon Musk's team of government efficiency enforcers to obtain vast amounts of personal and financial information, setting up a legal showdown in the Trump administration's signature effort to shrink government.
The AFL-CIO and the Alliance for Retired Americans said in a lawsuit Monday that the Treasury Department and agency head Scott Bessent illegally allowed their members' records to be shared with Musk's organization, DOGE.
U.S. President Trump has put Musk in charge of modernizing federal information technology. Trump explained that Musk is the richest man in the world and does not have the power to stop payments on his own without approval, but he is allowed into Treasury systems to monitor federal spending.
According to the lawsuit, the Treasury Department engaged in "unlawful, ongoing, systematic and persistent disclosures of personal and financial information" to Musk's team. "The scale of the invasion of personal privacy is unprecedented," the groups said.
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