The Justice Department urged a New York federal judge to roll back a judicial order over the weekend that restricted access to a critical Treasury Department payment system, with members of the Trump administration publicly contemplating resistance to judicial orders.
The order came amid a fast-moving legal battle over access to a system that handles trillions of dollars in payments each year, one of numerous lawsuits over actions taken by President Donald Trump and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk.
A coalition of state attorneys general filed a lawsuit late Friday over DOGE’s access to the payment system. Early Saturday, Judge Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered that only career Treasury employees could access the system.
Englemayer is not assigned to the case, but cited in his order his role as a judge assigned to emergency requests.
The Justice Department in a Sunday filing called the order a “remarkable intrusion” into the executive branch and said it restricted political appointees such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from accessing the payment system.
“Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the president,” the filing said.
Nineteen state attorneys general argued in the lawsuit that the Treasury Department granting DOGE-designated temporary employees access to the payment system housed in the Bureau of the Fiscal Service opened it up to potential hacking and privacy violations.
In its filing on Sunday, the Justice Department said the government had been complying with the Saturday order.
The filing said the only temporary employee who had access to the system, Thomas Krause, had read-only access to the system and had complied with the order not to access it.
Marko Elez, a temporary employee who the DOJ said last week also had access to the system, no longer works for the government, the filing said. Sunday’s filing said Elez previously had access to the payment system code in a “sandbox” environment.
On Sunday, the judge assigned to the case, Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York, entered an order directing the states and DOJ to confer about agreeing to alter the order or lay out their arguments in legal filings Monday evening.
DOJ’s filing Sunday came amid a furor of pushback from Trump and his allies who contemplated defying judicial orders and impeaching judges who rule against them. Trump himself called the ruling “a disgrace” in a social media post over the weekend.
Vice President JD Vance posted that “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” in response to the ruling.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller criticized the ruling as illegitimate in an appearance on Fox News on Sunday.
“This isn’t just unconstitutional. That ruling is an assault on the very idea of democracy itself,” Miller said.
Musk, who has criticized court rulings against the Trump administration, referred to Engelmayer as “corrupt” in a social media post.
“He needs to be impeached NOW!” Musk wrote.
The states’ lawsuit, and emergency order, is separate from a suit by current and retired employee unions last week. In that case, a judge approved an order restricting the Treasury Department from expanding access to the system or allowing information to be shared outside the Treasury Department while the case continues.
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