Montana among states urging court to let Musk access Treasury
Rox Laird
(CN) — Twenty Republican state attorneys general filed a friend-of-the-court brief in federal court in Manhattan on Friday opposing the New York attorney general’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system.
In their amicus curiae brief, the state attorneys general say that if the federal court prevents the administration from carrying out President Trump’s mandate from voters to root out government waste, fraud, and abuse, it would amount to “an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers and the president’s authority under Article II of the Constitution.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general who sued Trump on Feb. 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The 33-page civil complaint sought to stop Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records containing sensitive personal data, such as Social Security and bank account numbers of millions of Americans.
The Musk team’s access to payment systems had been blocked by a temporary restraining order issued Feb. 7 and extended a week later. The Trump administration filed a motion in federal court in Manhattan on Feb. 9 asking the court to throw out the temporary restraining order. The amicus brief filed by the 20 Republican state attorneys general on Friday urges the federal court to deny the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.
“Ultimately, plaintiffs here are upset because one set of bureaucrats in the executive branch have access to data that they believe only other bureaucrats in the executive branch should have access to,” the Republican AGs argue in the brief. “This type of fiddling around with the president’s prerogatives asks this court to insert itself into core executive decision-making regarding policy and personnel.”
Article II of the Constitution, which lays out the powers of the president, grants the president broad authority over the executive branch of government, the brief argues.
“There can be no serious doubt that the president’s broad authority to oversee and control executive branch employees includes the power to authorize particular executive branch employees to access the computer systems of an executive agency,” the brief says.
The attorneys general say a key element of President Trump’s 2024 campaign was to “disrupt the status quo of the federal bureaucracy, to ensure that federal bureaucrats are accountable to democratically elected officials, and to eliminate wasteful government spending that has resulted from a longstanding lack of transparency and accountability.”
They say the administration’s conduct at issue in this case directly relates to the fulfillment of that campaign promise: “The president has tasked certain executive branch employees — in particular, employees from within the Executive Office of the President and the U.S. Digital Service, since renamed — to examine the executive branch agency’s operations to identify instances of fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct.”
Instead, the Republican state AGs argue New York AG James and other Democratic state AGs supporting an injunction “seek to weaponize the federal judiciary to nullify the will of the American voters. The Constitution does not permit this result. The court should deny plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.”
Friday’s amicus brief was filed by the states of Iowa, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah.