WASHINGTON (CN) — House Democrats are demanding that the White House fork over a trove of data related to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, as lawmakers hike scrutiny on the billionaire’s influence over the federal government.
In a Freedom of Information Act request filed Tuesday with the Office of Management and Budget, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee commanded the organization to provide documents, communications and other information related to the government efficiency group’s review of sensitive data and its efforts to shutter federal agencies and fire staff.
But the lawmakers also urged the Donald Trump administration to clear up once and for all whether Musk is indeed in charge of the government efficiency outfit he has long championed.
Musk, who helped bankroll Trump’s 2024 campaign and has emerged as a key adviser in his second administration, has drawn Democrats’ ire in recent months as the brainchild behind the Department of Government Efficiency, abbreviated as DOGE.
The agency, created from the former U.S. Digital Service, has crusaded against what Musk frames as wasteful government spending, sending its workers into federal agencies to audit data, cancel contracts and trim staffing.
While Musk has been vocally supportive of DOGE and has publicly positioned himself as the agency’s head, the White House has been cagey about the billionaire adviser’s formal status within the organization.
The Trump administration has said that Musk is a “special government employee,” and the president said during an address to Congress this month that DOGE is “headed by Elon Musk.” But in court cases challenging some of the agency’s actions, government lawyers have said that the billionaire has no decision-making authority and have identified Amy Gleason as DOGE’s acting administrator.
The White House’s murky comments about DOGE’s leadership structure have particularly irked Democrats, who have accused Musk of running roughshod on the Constitution and exposing his own conflicts of interest as he chainsaws government programs.
“These contradictory and confusing statements leave everything perfectly unclear except the inescapable conclusion that President Trump, Elon Musk and the Administration have been consistently lying to the courts or to the American people, or both, about who is in charge of DOGE,” wrote Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin and Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly in a Monday letter to Gleason.
In their FOIA request to the Office of Management and Budget, the Democrats demanded that the agency provide records identifying the job title, grade and description of dozens of DOGE employees including Musk and Gleason. In particular, the lawmakers asked for information that would shed light on the “chains of command” at the government efficiency outfit, such as an organizational chart.
The Democrats also requested details of DOGE employees’ resumes, conflict of interest waivers and any non-disclosure agreements they signed — as well as communications between staff that mention any of Musk’s business ventures such as SpaceX, Starlink and Tesla.
The lawmakers further demanded that the White House turn over internal analyses of DOGE’s efforts to trim or close federal agencies, such as the recent shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its plans for dismantling, eliminating or reducing staff at the Education Department and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And they directed the Office of Management and Budget to explain the authority of DOGE employees to “direct, lead, execute, issue and/or complete” any task related to restructuring agencies, canceling contracts or firing federal employees.
Finally, the Democrats asked the White House to hand over documents related to the DOGE team’s access to sensitive data at any federal agency and demanded to know whether staffers were trained on how to handle such information. They also requested information about the government efficiency outfit’s use of artificial intelligence on data it collected.
In their letter to Gleason, Raskin and Connolly said that their FOIA request was aimed at lifting a “veil of secrecy” around DOGE and Musk’s involvement in the organization.
“We are citizens of a strong democracy and not subjects of an oligarchical techno-state,” the lawmakers wrote. “The President, Mr. Musk and DOGE can and will be held accountably to the American people, the original and ultimate source of all sovereign power in the United States of America.”
In the first few months of the second Trump administration, Musk and DOGE claimed to have cut more than $50 billion in government spending. But those figures were quickly called into question, with reports pointing out that the agency’s public-facing “wall of receipts” features typos and other mistakes which drastically overestimated the savings it had identified. As of earlier this month, DOGE has reportedly only cut around $2 billion in spending.
Raskin and Connolly told Gleason on Monday that these issues and Musk’s general refusal to engage with Congress fly in the face of commitments he made to undertake such a transparent review of government programs that there would be “no need” for FOIA requests.
“He has utterly failed to follow through on that promise,” they said.