Washington DC - A staffer in Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was "mistakenly" granted full access to the country's federal payment system.

According to the AFP, Joseph Gioeli, an official with the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, handed in a sworn statement to a federal judge on Tuesday in which he claimed Musk's staffer Marko Elez (25), who has no federal government status, was given the ability to edit the Secure Payment System (SPS) – the highly sensitive payments system containing millions of Americans' personal information.

"On the morning of February 6, it was discovered that Mr. Elez's database access to SPS on February 5 had mistakenly been configured with read/write permissions instead of read-only," Gioeli wrote.

The statement further states that Elez was not aware of the access and that "no unauthorized actions had taken place."

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The admission was included in a series of affidavits filed in federal court in New York, as President Donald Trump's administration is fighting a federal judge's recent order that blocked Musk and other non-government officials from being given access to the Treasury Department.

Musk, who has been given unprecedented amounts of power since Trump won re-election, has been tasked with slashing "wasteful" government spending and has demanded access to the department to do so.

Last week, after a report uncovered racist remarks Elez made in the past on social media, he quit his job with DOGE – only to be reinstated by Musk a day later.