When Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team swept through government last year, public information about the team members and their positions was hard to come by.
Over a year after most DOGE members departed the government, independent auditors still cannot pinpoint who all the DOGE personnel were. A Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday identified 206 DOGE personnel in the Executive Office of the President, based on court filings and agencies’ responses to the GAO’s questions.
GAO acknowledged the reconstruction of the DOGE team is incomplete and doesn’t account for everyone who was in DOGE government-wide. GAO only received responses from 15 of the 25 agencies it requested information from; it did not hear back from others, including the State Department, Veterans Affairs and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Congress’s investigative arm sought to review DOGE members’ completion of ethics and records management trainings, but President Donald Trump’s administration offered incomplete information on compliance.
For instance, the Executive Office of the President declined to provide training records or financial disclosure forms, even though it said DOGE personnel received the same training on ethics as other staff did. Other agencies, including the Pentagon, Energy Department and Social Security Administration, said they had no records to share.
When GAO investigators sought to interview Musk, he didn’t answer requests sent by mail or through advisers at Tesla.
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