Back in February, a U.S. District judge named Paul Engelmayer blocked the then-Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency from accessing an important Treasury Department payment system, leading to his getting obliterated by President Trump and Elon Musk for being “corrupt” and rogue.
For reference, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer temporarily paused DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department system that distributes payments like tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments, and the salaries paid to federal employees. DOGE was attempting to access the system to find waste and fraud.
However, Judge Engelmayer blocked not only that access, but the ability of any Trump nominees to access the system, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Justifying his decision in a ridiculous, without precedent ruling, Judge Engelmayer said, “the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.” Eventually, his order was overturned and DOGE was granted access to the Treasury system.
President Trump, slamming the decision, told FNC’s Brett Baier, “No, I disagree with it 100 percent.” Continuing, he said that the order is “crazy,” as the government needs to crack down on wasteful spending, saying, “I think it’s crazy.” He added, “We have to solve the efficiency problem, fraud, waste, abuse.”
Then, commenting on the massive scale of the problem, the president said, “We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of money going to places it shouldn’t be going.” He further added, “I don’t know if it’s kickbacks, I don’t know what’s going on. ran on this, and the people want me to find it, and I’ve had a great help with Elon Musk, who’s been terrific.”
Elon, for his part, chimed in too, and even more strongly. He declared in an angry post on X that the judge was not only “protecting corruption” but was himself corrupt. Elon wrote, on that point, “A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!” Agreeing with him, top commenter Gunther Eagleman wrote, “And then jailed to make an example of what happens to corrupt partisan hack judges.”
The likely thing to which Elon was referring with his allegation of corruption was the judge’s wife collecting a salary from a USAID-funded NGO. As one poster on X put it, “Judge Paul Engelmayer is a threat to democracy. His wife also collects money from an NGO that is funded by USAID! He should have recused himself. He corrupt as f*ck!”
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Congressman Eli Crane (R-AZ), tried starting an impeachment of the judge, though it went nowhere. Defending the attempt to impeach the judge at the time, Rep. Crane said, “Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy […] Judge Engelmayer is attempting to stop White House employees from accessing the very systems they oversee. Where in the constitution does it say a President and his team cannot root out obvious waste, fraud and abuse?”
Agreeing with Rep. Crane, Jaunita Broaddrick wrote, “This activist Judge is protecting his Democrat cronies. Remove and impeach.” Similarly, another poster on X wrote, “I am happy to see that at least some Republicans have found a spine and are fighting back against these activist judges. Every single judge should have impeachment proceedings launched against them. Make them fight to keep their positions and have to defend their actions.”
Watch Newt Gingrich slam rogue judges here: