Answer by Paul Spaven for git rebase: "error: cannot stat 'file': Permission denied"

Same issue on Windows 10 64 Bit, running Git Bash version 2.9.0.windows1Using Atom as my editor.

This worked for me: I added the Git software folder (for me, this was C:\Program Files\Git) to the exclusions for Windows Defender.

After the exclusion was added, git checkout 'file' worked fine.