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Donald Trump’s administration doesn’t know, or won’t say, even in a courtroom when confronted by a judge, who is running the so-called U.S. DOGE Service, which Elon Musk and his team of engineers are using to wreak havoc across federal agencies.
During a hearing in Washington, D.C. on DOGE’s access to Department of Treasury records on Monday, government lawyers couldn’t answer whether an administrator for the agency even exists.
“Is there an administrator of DOGE at the present time?” asked Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Department of Justice trial counsel Bradley Humphreys replied.
The question is the latest failed attempt to get, on the record, a clear understanding of the role of the world’s wealthiest man within the Trump administration, which is deploying Musk to gut federal agencies of thousands of workers and block the transfer of congressionally approved funds in a crusade against “waste” and “fraud” with little evidence to show for it.
A breakneck effort to hold the administration accountable in court has been met with what appears to be a rapid attempt among administration officials and government lawyers to obfuscate the true nature of Musk’s role.
Last week, a judge in a separate case noted that DOGE is trying to “escape” the “obligations that accompany agencyhood” — including being subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act — “while reaping only its benefits.”
Trump’s administration is facing an avalanche of lawsuits alleging the president and Musk have launched a constitutional wrecking ball, flying in the face of checks and balances and usurping authority to dismantle entire federal agencies without any action from Congress.
But according to the White House, the buck stops with Trump.
Musk is merely an employee of the White House, serving as a “senior adviser to the president,” who has “no greater authority other than other senior White House advisers [have], and has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” according to a sworn statement from a senior White House official on February 18.
The next day, when a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who, then, exactly, is the administrator for DOGE, she called him a “special government employee within the executive office of the president, and the agencies are directing the cuts and … the wasteful spending.”
That same day, Trump himself appeared to contradict Leavitt and his own administration’s sworn statement when he stated: “I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency, and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.”
By the weekend, Musk declared federal employees must answer an email from the government’s HR agency or they would be fired, throwing agencies into chaos and drawing a series of contradictory messages from agency officials.
After taking office, Trump renamed the existing United States Digital Service to the U.S. DOGE Service, or Department of Government Efficiency. Groups suing Musk and DOGE argue that Musk has assumed so much power that he appears to be violating the Constitution’s appointments clause, which requires senior executive branch officials to be confirmed by the Senate.
Last week, a federal judge in Manhattan blocked DOGE from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems while a legal challenge plays out.
A judge in Washington, D.C. last week declined to block Musk from his work, but noted that plaintiffs in that case “legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.”
And on Monday, another judge blocked DOGE from accessing Department of Education information.
“Isn’t there some problem, if there’s no administrator, as to how USDS functions?” Judge Kollar-Kotelly asked Monday.
“Who supervises them, who comes up with ideas?” the judge asked. “Who’s telling them what to do?”
Based on the “limited record” in front of her, Kollar-Kotelly said she has “some concerns about the constitutionality of USDS structure and operations.”
In a letter to Trump last week, after the White House told a court that Musk is not even an employee of DOGE, House Oversight Committee Democrat Gerry Connolly demanded further clarification on Musk’s role.
He told the president either “you are lying” or a top White House official perjured himself — “a criminal offense that can lead to up to five years in prison,” Connolly wrote.
Asked about the constitutionality of DOGE’s role during a White House meeting with Emanuel Macron on Monday, Trump fired back that DOGE “has nothing to do with the Constitution.”
“The radical left, or whoever it may be, starts screaming about the Constitution, but has nothing to do with the Constitution,” he said.
