U.S. judge says Musk’s DOGE must release records on operations run in ‘secrecy’

Elon Musk leaves after meeting with Senate Republicans, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

A U.S. federal judge on Monday ordered the government-downsizing team created by U.S. President Donald Trump and spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk to make public records concerning its operations, which he said had been run in “unusual secrecy.”

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington sided with the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in finding that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was likely an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The ruling, the first of its kind, marked an early victory for advocates seeking to force DOGE to become more transparent about its role in the mass firings being conducted in the federal workforce and the dismantling of government agencies by the Republican president’s administration.

The Trump administration argued DOGE as an arm of the Executive Office of the President was not subject to FOIA, a law that allows the public to seek access to records produced by government agencies.

But Cooper, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said DOGE was exercising “substantial independent authority” much greater than the other components of that office that are usually exempt from FOIA.

Cooper said it “appears to have the power not just to evaluate federal programs, but to drastically reshape and even eliminate them wholesale,” a fact the judge said the agency declined to refute.

He said its “operations thus far have been marked by unusual secrecy,” citing reports about DOGE’s use of an outside server, its employees' refusal to identify themselves to career officials and their use of the encrypted app Signal to communicate.

Donald Sherman, CREW’s executive director and chief counsel, welcomed the ruling. “Now more than ever, Americans deserve transparency in their government,” he said in a statement.

A White House official in a statement said the judge has a “misunderstanding of how DOGE works.” The official said the White House expects Cooper to reverse himself “once he correctly comprehends DOGE’s structure.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

CREW launched the lawsuit on February 20 after filing requests under FOIA seeking information on DOGE’s operations, including communications such as internal government emails and memos.

CREW asked Cooper to order the records released by Monday, arguing that the public and Congress needed the information during the debate over government funding legislation that must pass by Friday to avert a partial government shutdown.

Cooper declined to order the records released by Monday but said they must be produced on an expedited basis, citing a need for timely information on DOGE given the “unprecedented” authority it was exercising.

The judge directed the Trump administration to file a status report by March 20 estimating the number of documents at issue and ordered the parties to propose by March 27 a schedule for rolling production of the documents.

Cooper also entered an order directing DOGE to preserve records, citing “the possibility that representatives of the Defendant entities may not fully appreciate their obligations to preserve federal records.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Louise Heavens, Deepa Babington and Nick Zieminski)