Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk speaks during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File).
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been operating “in the shadows,” wielding unconstitutional authority across multiple agencies while providing the public with “no meaningful transparency” and failing to keep proper records, according to a new lawsuit from a nonprofit government watchdog group.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) accused DOGE of unlawfully refusing to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records associated with the government group’s actions and ignored repeated demands for DOGE to preserve its records under the Federal Records Act.
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CREW has requested records and documents related to communications between Office of Management and Budget (OMB) staffers and individuals who were affiliated with DOGE prior to Trump’s inauguration, changes to the operations of the U.S. Digital Service, organizational charts and financial disclosures, and DOGE’s communications with federal agencies, which DOGE and the other plaintiffs have so far failed to turn over.
The filing requests that a federal judge order OMB and DOGE — as well as their leaders — to promptly disclose the requested records, to preserve all records until the court decides the case, and to initiate enforcement action to recover any lost records.
The suit asserts that while President Donald Trump vowed DOGE would operate with “maximum transparency,” in actuality, “it has done the opposite.”
“The entity has worked in the shadows — a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight. [DOGE] has provided no meaningful transparency into its operations or assurances that it is maintaining proper records of its unprecedented and legally dubious work,” the suit states.
“The American people have a right to know how [DOGE] is managing (or mismanaging) their tax dollars and their data, how it is exercising its authority to influence government operations, whether conflicts of interest in [DOGE] leadership are impacting its work, and the extent to which it is operating outside of its slim legal mandate. And the public interest is heightened by the unprecedented nature and scale of [DOGE] operations. [DOGE] must comply with federal transparency laws, regardless of whether it is a fully governmental body or a mix of public and private actors.”
Despite its title, DOGE is not an actual federal government department. Rather, it is a “temporary organization” formed by President Donald Trump via executive order tasked with “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize efficiency and productivity” by reducing the number of federal workers and cutting spending. The organization is established under the Executive Office of the President and its yet-to-be-named administrator will report to the White House chief of staff.
Among the allegedly unlawful actions DOGE has taken since its inception include dismantling USAID, an independent agency authorized by Congress, “effectively” taking over the Office of Personnel Management, canceled billions of dollars in federal contracts, secured potentially illegal access to “highly restricted and confidential data” at numerous federal agencies, and posted classified data to DOGE’s public website, according to the complaint.
“Following records retention and release laws is especially important for a non-congressionally created agency wielding unprecedented power over funding that affects the lives of the American people every day, and touches our international efforts as well,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Preserving and releasing records is not an option, but a necessity, and the Trump administration should welcome compliance with these laws to shine a light on work they have touted and provide the ‘maximum transparency’ that was promised. We will not relent in our efforts to make these documents public.”
