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Court documents submitted on Friday as part of a lawsuit involving the US Treasury Department, disclose that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old staff member of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), breached Treasury protocol by sharing a spreadsheet containing personal details with two officials from the Trump administration, as reported by Bloomberg.
Elez, who previously worked for Elon Musk’s X and SpaceX, was employed to evaluate the Treasury’s payment systems. However, he resigned in February following the emergence of racist posts associated with him on social media. Following this incident, DOGE reemployed him at the Social Security Administration after his brief departure.
In February, 19 state attorneys general initiated legal action against the Treasury Department concerning DOGE’s access to certain systems. The Treasury has stated that Elez was “mistakenly” granted both read and write access to the department’s databases. Due to a court order, DOGE’s system access remains limited, although the government intends to seek modifications to this order, according to Bloomberg.
The findings announced in the recent filing by the Treasury indicate that an examination of Elez’s laptop and email revealed no alterations to the Bureau’s payment systems. However, he did send a spreadsheet encompassing details such as “a name (a person or entity), a transaction type, and an amount of money” to two unnamed officials at the US General Services Administration.
The Treasury has characterized the document as low-risk, noting the absence of sensitive identifiers like social security numbers or birth dates. Nonetheless, the department indicates that Elez’s actions violated policy due to failure to encrypt the spreadsheet or to secure the appropriate approvals before transmitting it.
In a separate document from Friday related to the states’ lawsuit against the Treasury, the plaintiffs asserted that the results from the analysis “do nothing to alleviate any of the concerns raised by the court regarding the expedited and disorderly nature of the Treasury DOGE Team’s onboarding process.”
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www.theverge.com