New court filings indicate that contrary to the Federal Reserve’s claims, agency employees may have met with personnel associated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Amid Democratic scrutiny over DOGE’s governmental oversight, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reassured lawmakers during testimony to the House Financial Services Committee in February that the Federal Reserve had made “no contact” with Musk’s team.
However, court documents recently submitted as part of the Alliance for Retired Americans and other progressive unions’ legal battle against the Treasury Department’s move to allow DOGE access to payment systems paint a different picture and cast doubt on Powell’s claims, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
The filings allege that two DOGE staffers, who were also Treasury employees, met with Federal Reserve personnel in late January. DOGE staffers Thomas Krause and Marko Elez allegedly discussed the Treasury Department’s payment systems with Federal Reserve employees in Kansas City.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Federal Reserve for comment but did not receive a response.
The new documents were filed in relation to a lawsuit brought against the Treasury Department by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees, and the Service Employees International Union. The lawsuit alleged that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent broke the law when he provided DOGE access to the department’s payment portal.
The unions suffered a blow last Friday when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected their request to block DOGE employees from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system.
“If Plaintiffs could show that Defendants imminently planned to make their private information public or to share that information with individuals outside the federal government with no obligation to maintain its confidentiality, the Court would not hesitate to find likelihood of irreparable harm,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
“But on the present record, Plaintiffs have not shown that Defendants have such a plan,” she added.
NEW YORK JUDGE BLOCKS DOGE FROM ACCESSING TREASURY SYSTEM
Despite Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling, DOGE is still blocked from accessing the payment portal due to another court’s ruling.
U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in a February ruling that “irreparable harm” could be risked by DOGE’s ability to access millions of people’s sensitive data, including Social Security numbers and bank account information.