Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Halt DOGE Inquiry (2)

The Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court to block a government watchdog group from questioning a senior official and obtaining internal records about the Department of Government Efficiency project once led by Elon Musk.

The March 18 request by the Justice Department is part of a long-running legal fight with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is seeking to uncover information about DOGE’s efforts last year to drastically cut federal spending and fire thousands of government workers.

The justices intervened in the same case last year in favor of the administration, halting CREW’s fact-finding push. But the case was sent back to a federal appeals court, which allowed CREW’s requests for documents and testimony to proceed after the liberal-leaning organization narrowed some of its lines of inquiry.

Read More: DOGE Head Must Testify in Records Access Fight, Court Rules

CREW is demanding government records about DOGE under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The Trump administration argues that DOGE is not an “agency” covered by the transparency law.

Before reaching that core question, a judge in Washington gave CREW permission to gather evidence about how DOGE has operated — including making its administrator Amy Gleason available to testify under oath at a deposition. The administration has been fighting that step for months.

Lawyers in the US solicitor general’s office wrote in the new petition that the lower courts’ handling of the dispute “intrudes into the autonomy and confidentiality of presidential advisors and augurs time-consuming and burdensome discovery litigation.”

CREW’s President Donald Sherman accused the government of taking steps to drag out the legal fight to avoid “politically damaging” disclosures.

“This is emblematic of the administration’s ongoing commitment to shield the public from understanding how DOGE worked, and the incredible amount of harm that it has created for everyday Americans, while failing spectacularly at accomplishing its stated goal of producing more efficiency,” Sherman said.

Court’s Order

In a 6-3 order last June, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued a brief, unsigned order that tossed out lower court decisions permitting CREW to get the information that it wanted. The court wrote that whether a federal agency is covered by FOIA “cannot turn on the entity’s ability to persuade,” so it wasn’t appropriate to compel the administration to disclose information about DOGE’s “recommendations” within the executive branch and whether they were followed.

The justices also wrote that “separation of powers concerns counsel judicial deference and restraint in the context of discovery regarding internal Executive Branch communications.”

CREW pulled back its requests for information about the DOGE office’s “recommendations” but continued to press for details about its structure, functions and decisions that it “directed” as opposed to “recommended.” A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit refused to disturb CREW’s revised request in July, and the full appeals court declined to revisit that decision in mid-December.

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to consider the merits of the case and so far hasn’t asked the justices to immediately intervene on an emergency basis.

Disputes over access to government records and information about what DOGE-affiliated workers did last year and the role Musk played have persisted long after the world’s richest man left his formal role as a presidential adviser last spring. Musk spearheaded the effort and served as its public face, but didn’t serve as the formal administrator of the office.

Personal Information

Legal fights have forced the administration to disclose new details about the scope of DOGE’s access to Americans’ personal information and communications with an as-yet-unidentified “political advocacy group” that wanted help analyzing state voter rolls.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court blocked Musk from being compelled to testify in a different case alleging that he exercised an unconstitutional amount of executive power in directing the closing of the US Agency for International Development, after a Maryland judge ruled the deposition could happen.

A New York judge forced the administration to release names of employees and contractors associated with DOGE as part of a lawsuit contesting cuts to National Endowment for the Humanities grants.

She later ordered organizations pursuing that case to temporarily take down videos of former DOGE employees’ depositions that were shared widely online, in which they discussed using artificial intelligence tools to find funding with some connection to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. On Monday, the judge ruled the videos could be released again, writing that the government’s report that witnesses faced harassment was “deeply troubling” but citing the “strong public interest.”

In Washington, a federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to try to find any phone numbers Musk used during his time in the White House. The groups seeking public records in the case expressed concern that information they might be entitled to later would be lost if Musk used personal devices while he worked for the government. The Justice Department is due to update the judge on its progress by April 3.

(Updates with comment from Donald Sherman.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Anthony Lin at alin364@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman, Steve Stroth

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