A district judge has ordered Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), officially called the U.S. DOGE Service (USDS), to comply with public records requests, noting how the office, which directly reports to U.S. President Donald Trump, has operated with “unusual secrecy” since its establishment.
“The rapid pace of USDS’s actions, in turn, requires the quick release of information about its structure and activities,” District Judge Christopher Cooper said Monday.
Judge Concerned About DOGE’s Alleged ‘Secrecy’
According to Cooper’s memorandum opinion filed Monday, the USDS said the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) requested documents to “learn more about USDS’s role in spearheading the mass firings and dramatic disruptions to federal programs that have punctuated the opening weeks of President Trump’s second term.”
Cooper said the DOGE refused to process CREW’s request, arguing that the office is not an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which requires any federal agency under the U.S. government to furnish information or documents unless the agency falls under one of nine exemptions.
Cooper further noted how the DOGE supposedly engaged in secretive operations:
- Signal messaging – DOGE employees reportedly revealed they were added to groups on encrypted messaging app Signal after they joined the office, and some “people involved in the operation [said] that secrecy and avoiding leaks is paramount.” Signal has an auto-deleting feature.
- Own server connection – Cooper said the USDS reportedly installed an “outside server at the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) to store the personal information of government staffers, including their names and email addresses.
- Identity kept secret – The district judge cited CREW when he said USDS personnel refused to identify themselves even when career officials asked them to do so, “further suggesting that the agency is operating with unusual secrecy.”
Cooper has ordered the DOGE to preserve all records that may be crucial in CREW’s FOIA requests, and also ordered a joint status report that will propose an amicable timeline for the expedited processing and rolling production of USDS records in response to CREW’s requests.
Specifically, CREW demands that the DOGE release information related to:
- Communications between Musk and DOGE-linked employees
- Communications between DOGE staffers and other personnel across American agencies
- Documents showing the DOGE’s organizational structure
- Documents showing the DOGE’s personnel and operations flow
Musk Plans Doubling DOGE Workforce
Judge Cooper’s new order came after Musk said he is looking to double the USDS workforce as DOGE attempts “to act broadly across all [federal] departments.”
He said in a Monday interview that DOGE is “pretty much” moving across all federal agencies at this point and has around 100 staffers, but he is looking to increase the personnel count to around 200.
Following news of the latest court order, Musk took to X to say “public support for DOGE is super high,” reposting an earlier post where he asked his millions of X users if they support the office’s work on “reducing government waste & fraud.”
A total of 42.3% of the 1.5 million poll respondents said they were “super” in favor, while 38.8% said “Yes,” and 18.9% were against it.
There has been increasing opposition from transparency advocates on the DOGE’s activities, especially amid concerns that DOGE staffers may access sensitive taxpayer information as it digs through the federal budget.
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