March 11 (UPI) — A federal judge ruled Monday that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will likely have to open its records to Freedom of Information Act requests.
United States District Court Judge Casey Cooper made the call in a suit filed Friday by government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. CREW had lodged a pair of immediate FOIA requests with the Office of Management and Budget and one with the DOGE in order to learn more about how DOGE is working to conduct its “mass firings and dramatic disruptions to federal programs that have punctuated the opening weeks of President [Donald] Trump’s second term.”
OMB had already agreed to expedite the information requested of it, but the suit charges that DOGE has refused to process the ask by CREW, on the claim that it is not an actual agency subject to FOIA.
Cooper found that DOGE is in fact covered by FOIA and decided that “the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records” CREW requested and ordered DOGE to start sharing its documents “on a rolling basis as soon as practicable,” but did not set a fixed date to begin such sharing, likely because his ruling is open to appeal.
Cooper denied CREW’s request to receive the documentation on Monday but did order both OMB and DOGE to preserve their records to eventually supply to CREW.
The judge also ordered OMB and DOGE to have an estimate of what records will need to be supplied by March 20 and then to meet with CREW and file a joint status report by March 27 that proposes “a schedule for expedited processing and rolling production of responsive records.”
Cooper said he came to the conclusion because DOGE “has obtained unprecedented access to sensitive personal and classified data and payment systems across federal agencies” and the placing of “large numbers of USAID employees on administrative leave in February.”
The judge then verified CREW as a nonprofit watchdog agency “committed to protecting the public’s right to be aware of the activities of government officials, to ensuring the integrity of those officials, and to highlighting and working to reduce the influence of money on politics” who “routinely disseminates information obtained through FOIA to the public.”
The judge also added that members of Congress should know what DOGE “is up to” but didn’t think it needs that information regarding the upcoming Friday government shutdown deadline. However, Cooper did write in his decision that “the authority exercised by [DOGE] across the federal government and the dramatic cuts it has apparently made with no congressional input appear to be unprecedented. All these factors together bolster the Court’s conclusion that a years-long delay in processing the [DOGE] Request would cause irreparable harm.”
