‘Promptly corrected’: Elon Musk’s DOGE staffer was ‘mistakenly’ given ‘edit’ access to sensitive Treasury data

A staff member from Elon Musk’s DOGE team was mistakenly granted permissions to edit a highly sensitive Treasury payments system but did not use them, according to court documents released on Tuesday (Feb 11).

Joseph Gioeli III, Deputy Commissioner for Transformation and Modernisation at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, detailed the error in a nine-page affidavit.

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He said that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE staffer, was “mistakenly” given “read/write” access to a section of the Treasury payment system responsible for handling trillions of dollars annually. However, the mistake was “promptly corrected,” and a review confirmed that Elez had not made any changes to the database during the time he had access, according to Gioeli.

Previously, the Treasury Department had said that Elez had only been granted “read-only” access to the system.

Elez resigned from his Treasury role last week following the reports of his racist social media posts. Despite this, Musk has said that Elez will be reinstated. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance also supported Elez’s return.

“The initial investigation confirmed that all of Elez’s interactions … occurred within the supervised, walk-through session and that no unauthorised actions had taken place. His access was promptly corrected to read-only, and he did not log into the system again,” Gioeli’s affidavit read.

The affidavits were filed in a federal court case brought by the New York attorney general and more than a dozen Democratic attorneys general, who are seeking to limit DOGE’s access to the Treasury system.

On Tuesday, US District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas upheld an earlier ruling that bars unauthorised access to the payment system.

Officials from the Trump administration argue that their goal is to prevent fraudulent or wasteful payments and to enforce the president’s executive order halting foreign aid spending.

“It’s just common sense, it’s not draconian or radical,” Musk said during an Oval Office appearance with Trump on Tuesday, defending his DOGE team’s involvement with the Treasury payments system.

“I think it’s really just saying, let’s look at each of these expenditures and say, is this actually in the best interest of the people? And if it is, it’s approved, but if it’s not, we should think about it,” he added.

(With inputs from agencies)