Cnn
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The Elon Musk’s government Ministry of Effective Effectiveness has made its way through federal agencies in the past two months, causing dozens of prosecution in its efforts to shrink the federal government.
While the judges more closely examine the functioning of Doge and the authority he exercises through the federal bureaucracy, among the many questions they ask, it is so Doge is in fact a government agency itself.
The answer to this question, which it may seem pedantic, could have major ramifications, especially if Doge is subject to laws on public files and other laws which require a certain monitoring of the activity of the branches.
The laws could pose a control over what Musk can do with its government washing project – both by granting access to what is happening behind the scenes and giving legal tools to potentially reverse some of its most radical actions.
If DOGE is determined as a government entity which exercises “substantial authority independently of the president”, the public can request the publication of some of his internal files under the law on freedom of information.
The Trump administration says before the courts that federal agencies, rather than Musk’s initiatives, are what motivates the cuts. It is quite different from dramatic, braggadocios, the image of Musk chain saw and President Donald Trump painted in the public arena.
It is also different from what government denunciators have described testimony as their agencies are reduced and burned.
After modernizing DOGE on a pre -existing government information technology office known as US Digital Service, or USDS, the administration dispersed DOGE agents in a variety of headquarters from government agency in Washington.
Now, in a certain number of prosecution, the administration claims that DOGE has very little organization or centralized power, that its leaders are only advisers and that some of the agents integrated through the federal bureaucracy are now directly employed by the agencies they revised.
The statements before the courts of several government representatives claim that Musk has no official position at Doge, and no power to execute its vision of reducing the government. They say that his role is fair to give advice to the president.
The Ministry of Justice is based on this argument to try to convince the courts that they should not order the discovery, including the production of internal documents and even deposits. Several judges seem skeptical, often pointing public reports and contradictory declarations of government representatives in other cases. But the administration, in some cases, found a more receptive audience in terms of the call.
“There is this unusual disjunction between what Musk and his servants really do, and what the administration says they do” in judicial files, said Ilya Somin, professor of law at George Mason University. “The key question is: must the courts accept this description on paper, which could be false, or can they look at the underlying reality?”
The recent tactics have turned in some cases, because the judges concluded that the new explanations on the Doge approach raise more questions than they answer – and could therefore justify more discovery.
But the administration has taken aggressive measures so that the higher courts intervene in the fundamental disputes over what Doge is and, in some cases, the appeal orders obtained appeal orders by arresting the decisions of the judges.
Musk, meanwhile, suggested in a recent Fox News interview that the legal reverse was the result of “bias” and “corruption” in the judiciary.
“The DC circuit is known to have a very distant bias,” said Musk, while describing judges as having a close relationship with non -governmental organizations targeted in Doge Cutts. “Does it look like a system that lacks corruption?” It seems corrupt to me. ”
The Constitution’s appointment clause, which requires that certain leaders of the government receive confirmation from the Senate. The Supreme Court interpreted the clause to cover the officials exercising “important authority”.
Certain judicial disputes allege that this clause, as well as the principles of separation of powers, are raped as musk and its agents call the shots in scanning, major funding and mass cancellation of government contracts.
One of the groups contesting the DOGE authority revealed in the court documents this month that a letter of cancellation of subsidies that the group received was, according to its metadata, written by an affiliate of Doge, rather than the senior official of the Ministry of Education who signed it.
The assertion that the Constitution prohibits Musk from ordering agencies to make drastic modifications to their operations has already persuaded a Federal Judge of Maryland to limit the participation of Doge in the dismantling of the American agency for international development. But the access of Musk and Doge to the USAID was restored last week by the 4th Circuit of Appeals, which adopted the arguments of the administration according to which Musk played the role of presidential advisor and that the dismantling of the USAID had the support of the management of the agency.
In another trial attacking the influence of Musk, brought by the Attorney General of the Democratic State, the administration succeeded in appealing the order of discovery of a Federal DC judge who would have forced the government to answer specific questions and put documents in light on the role of Musk. The short and not signed order of the American circuit said that the judge, Tanya Chutkan, could not allow the discovery before deciding on Trump’s legal arguments to explain why the trial should be rejected.
The deposits of the administration with the Federal Court of Appeal of DC describe Musk as an adviser to the White House without any authority of his own who is entitled to large protections of the executive privilege because of the council he gives to the president.
Last month, the White House identified Amy Gleason as the acting administrator of the USD, after judges and journalists have deconvised the administration for weeks on which the role occupied.
In a case in which a surveillance group obtained an order from the court demanding the rapid liberation of internal documents from DOGE, the administration asked judge Casey Cooper to re -examine its conclusion that DOGE, as there is in the USD, was probably covered by the law of information and indicated declarations of the Gleason Court that USDS had “limited responsibilities” which are “purely adversely”.
While the USDS has 79 direct employees and 10 other persons detailed by other agencies, there is “no official front office or organizational table reflecting” the “current composition” of USDS, said Gleason in a declaration of justice this month.
Cooper examines more closely if the law on freedom of information, or foia, applies to Doge, but said that some of Gleason’s assertions have raised their own “factual disputes” which could justify a discovery.
Gleason’s statement that Musk does not work for the USDS was “contradicted” by Trump and Musk’s statements, Cooper wrote in one notice this month, and he highlighted the president’s reports that the cabinet secretaries cooperate with Doge on personnel issues.
The surveillance group behind the Foia dispute resumed Cooper’s invitation for discovery, looking for deposits from Gleason and Steve Davis, a longtime musk advisor now involved with Doge, as well as other internal information on its work.
The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), noted in its request for discovery on Thursday that Musk lawyers told a judge last week, in a case concerning his company X, that he was too busy to sit for a deposition because the White House had “in charge of the establishment and the implementation”.
“The representations of the defendants at this court that Mr. Musk not The Doges run is equivalent to the lighting of legal gases, “said Crew.
While Gleason explained in the case of the foia his “full -time” role at the USDS, a separate case revealed that she was simultaneously as a consultant at the Ministry of Health and Social Services to implement the Doge’s agenda. The case, one of the many access to difficult DOGEs to the data of the sensitive government, depends on the law on privacy, which limits which within the government can access troves of confidential data collected on the American public.
In the data case, judge John Bates has correctly four depositions, while enlightening other requests for discovery of the challengers.
The Ministry of Justice has argued this month that Bates should reconsider this order because the administration had changed speed in the way some Doge affiliates were deployed. In the agencies covered in the case, some DOGE representatives are now used as direct employees, rather than being temporarily detailed from DOGE, the administration said.
This new configuration, argued the Ministry of Justice, meant that Bates no longer needed to look under the hood on the operation of Doge.
But Bates rejected this justification and asked who these employees “hire directly” really responded to: those above them in Doge or in the agencies for which they also work.
The challengers of the case will be able to show the judge – and the public – what the discovery has shown to be the answer in a legal file of April 8.