A San Rafael nonprofit corporation Friday brought suit in federal court in San Francisco to force the disclosure of emails from Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, the agency informally known as DOGE.
The First Amendment Coalition, self-described as “dedicated to freedom of speech and government transparency,” brought its claim under the Freedom of Information Act, the federal law that requires agencies to give information to the public when requested.
FAC and its co-plaintiff, MSW Media Inc. of San Diego, sent a FOIA request asking to get copies of all DOGE emails to or from Elon Musk between Jan. 20 and Feb. 25, the date of its request.
They also sought all DOGE emails from Feb. 7 to Feb. 10.
Under the terms of the FOIA law, responses to the request were due in 20 days, but according to the complaint, as of Friday, more than a month later, nothing has been received.
FOIA does not require a requestor to say why they are interested in requested information. David Loy, legal director of FAC and one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, declined to go into the nitty-gritty of the requests, but said “the nature and extent of Elon Musk’s power and influence over the federal government is of immense public concern for obvious reasons.”
The shadowy world of DOGE
There has been confusion and uncertainty in Washington over how the operations of DOGE fit within the structure of the federal government.
DOGE emerged on the scene in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 20, 2024, when Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, then Musk’s co-head, wrote that DOGE planned to accomplish “mass head-count reductions” throughout the government.
To do that, they planned to work with “embedded employees” in federal agencies “to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its … mandated functions.”
After President Donald Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025, he issued Executive Order 14158 that established DOGE by taking the U.S. Digital Service, an existing agency within the Office of Management and Budget, renaming it, and moving it to the Executive Office of the President.
The leadership of DOGE is far from clear. A federal employee named Amy Gleason has been identified in legal filings as the acting administrator of the agency, but according to the complaint, “all evidence points to Musk actually running (DOGE) in practice if not in formal name.”
The complaint cites numerous times that Trump has referred to Musk as the head of DOGE, including during his March 4 joint address to Congress.
But in litigation, the agency takes a different position. The plaintiffs call out a declaration in which Gleason stated, “Elon Musk does not work at (DOGE). I do not report to him and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.”
The plaintiffs say that the Gleason declaration and others like it have been made “in bad faith to insulate Musk from any accountability or transparency.”
Ducking transparency
Loy points to the many instances identified in the complaint where Musk has been identified as acting for DOGE and says, “if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
He said that DOGE has denied it is subject to FOIA in other cases, “which I think is ironic given Elon Musk’s professed commitment to transparency.”
“Whether one approves or disapproves of his actions, the public has a right to know what he’s doing, who he’s talking to, and how they respond.” David Loy, First Amendment Coalition
Concerning Musk’s role in the Trump administration, Loy said, “Whether one approves or disapproves of his actions, the public has a right to know what he’s doing, who he’s talking to, and how they respond.”
He added, “This right to transparency is foundational to the function of democracy.”
Bay City News and Local News Matters publisher Katherine Ann Rowlands serves as president of the First Amendment Coalition’s board of directors.