This is my third Paul Engelmayer post so I created a tag for him. To recap, he's a judge in the Southern District of New York, which is the federal district court for Manhattan. I've described his accomplishments previously. On Saturday he granted a temporary restraining order requested by several state Attorneys General:
enjoining the defendants [Donald Trump and Scott Bessent] during the pendency of this action from granting to political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department access to Treasury Department payment systems or any other data maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information ....
It's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order bars appointees and employees from outside the Treasury Department--the part I bolded modifies the preceding three categories of people. He then further clarified this statement by writing:
the defendants are (i) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations; (ii) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and (iii) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any ....
Again, it's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order only applies to people outside of Treasury, and to people inside of Treasury who haven't gone through all the vetting and training required to handle confidential information. And if these types of people have this particular confidential information, they should destroy it.
But we live in the dumbest timeline of the MAGA cinematic universe so stupidity ensued. DOGE's doofus overlord called for him to be impeached. Of course, Trump offered the opinion that Engelmayer is "crazy" for temporarily restraining an unelected, unconfirmed ketamine addict working at a fictional government department from having unfettered access to the United States' money supply.
And then there's this:
Tom Cotton and Adrian Vermeule got their undergraduate and law degrees at Harvard. JD Vance graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State and got his JD at Yale. All three of these guys can read and understand Engelmayer's order.
They know it doesn't bar Bessent from accessing Treasury systems unless he hasn't completed the required background checks and training, in which case it likely maintains the status quo--you can't do that job and access all the secret stuff until you've completed all the security requirements.
And they know this isn't judicial interference, it's a TRO. It's temporary. This means the requesting party showed they will suffer irreparable harm so the judge made the other party pause to maintain the status quo for a few days while we figure out what the hell is going on.
Most importantly, they know this is exactly what the judiciary is supposed to do--determine what the law says and whether any particular act conflicts with it. It's been this way for over 200 years, we learned that in high school.
These Ivy League schmucks need to watch more Schoolhouse Rock.
Or maybe they watched it and took the circus metaphor too far by staffing the endeavor with a bunch of clowns.
Maybe I'm the clown. Remember when I said elections have consequences?
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