A federal judge in Washington has ordered Elon Musk and operatives involved with his Department of Government Efficiency to hand over documents and answer questions about its role in directing mass firings and dismantling government programs.
The judge, Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said on Wednesday that the plaintiffs in the case — a coalition of 14 Democratic state attorneys general challenging Mr. Musk’s authority — had demonstrated a clear need to shed light on the inner workings of Mr. Musk’s team. It was the first time a judge has ordered Mr. Musk’s division be subject to discovery.
In the weeks after Mr. Musk’s team fanned out across federal agencies demanding access to federal offices and databases, lawyers seeking to stop the group’s advances have been forced to rely on news reports and anecdotal evidence about what, exactly, Mr. Musk’s team has been doing.
In many cases, federal judges have grown frustrated by the inability of the government’s own lawyers to answer straightforward questions about what data Mr. Musk’s associates have viewed, or to what extent the group had directly spearheaded recent downsizing efforts. In filings in another case, the government has also downplayed Mr. Musk’s role, claiming he was not officially the group’s leader.
The group of states had asked Judge Chutkan to grant the request to let them probe Mr. Musk’s team for information in order to confirm details about its operations and its future plans, and to “illustrate the nature and scope of the unconstitutional and unlawful authority” they said Mr. Musk has so far exercised.
Judge Chutkan agreed, writing in an opinion that “the requests seek to identify DOGE personnel and the parameters of DOGE’s and Musk’s authority — a question central to Plaintiffs’ claims.”
The order on Wednesday was more limited than the states’ slightly more ambitious request, which included a demand for two members of Mr. Musk’s team to sit for depositions — an ask Judge Chutkan denied. But the order still requires Mr. Musk and his office to provide a broad array of information about its engagement with federal agencies, employees, contracts, grants and databases within three weeks.
Judges in other cases have responded similarly to demands for more clarity about Mr. Musk’s team, which has largely been shrouded in secrecy.
On Thursday, a judge in California required an associate of Mr. Musk’s who was detailed to the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources arm, to be deposed about any role he had in helping steer the mass firings of federal workers.
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