Musk Promised Government Transparency, DOGE Delivers Maximum Secrecy

Legal Issues

from the beginning-to-think-you-can't-really-trust-what-this-guy-says dept

Before the election, Elon Musk declared:

“I think that the strong bias with respect to government information should be to make it available to the public. Let’s be as transparent as possible. Fully transparent.”

When one of his fanboys tweeted that quote, Elon responded by making an even bigger claim, saying: “There should be no need for FOIA requests. All government data should be default public for maximum transparency.”

As big believers (and users) of the FOIA system, that actually sounded good to us, and I would have supported any actual effort to make more government information and documents public by default.

Right after the inauguration, Lauren Harper at the Freedom of the Press Foundation noted that this was an opportunity for Elon to put “his documents where his mouth is, and make DOGE’s records public.” But, she noted, the early indications didn’t look good, including the fact that one of their first orders of business was to shut down the OMB FOIA portal. It’s still down as I type this.

Of course, if Musk was living up to his words that we wouldn’t even need FOIA because he’d just make everything public, well, that would be one explanation.

But that’s not what is actually happening. Just as when he took over Twitter, we’re learning that Musk’s promises and Musk’s reality are wholly different things. When he promises to make things better for “the people,” he always means “make things better for Elon.”

As you can see, he said those things two days before Elon Musk was elected alongside Donald Trump to (apparently) rip out every bit of accountability from the government of the United States of America. Now that he has near total control over the systems that make the US work, he apparently wants them to be pretty damn secret.

We first heard about this last week when the always excellent 404 Media reported that the DOGE boys were told to stop using Slack, because someone realized the conversations were accessible by FOIA.

Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, 404 Media has learned.

“Good morning, everyone! As a reminder, please refrain from using Slack at the moment while our various general counsels figure out the best way to handle the records migration to our new EOP [Executive Office of the President] component,” a message seen by 404 Media reads. “Will update as soon as we have more information!”

Sounds like someone’s got something to hide, huh?

Given that not one, not two, but three of the DOGE boys have been outed as having terrible fucking judgment (either blatantly racist tweets or being involved with a fucked up cybercrime group built around Discord and Telegram chat channels) you have to imagine that some shit is going on in those Slack chats.

And thus, it was announced late last week that DOGE has been reorganized outside of OMB (subject to FOIA) and now under the Executive Office of the President, which is subject to the Presidential Records Act instead, allowing such records to be hidden for at least a decade.

The White House has designated Mr. Musk’s office, United States DOGE Service, as an entity insulated from public records requests or most judicial intervention until at least 2034, by declaring the documents it produces and receives presidential records.

And that, of course, is only if the Trump admin abides by the PRA, something he was famous for ignoring in his first administration, including when he took classified documents with him to Mar-A-Lago when he left office.

So, again, what is Elon hiding? After all, when he said everything should be public, he said the only exceptions should be things like “how to make a nuclear bomb.”

Seems like an admission that he’s doing some crazy shit.

Which is actually a problem if he’s claiming to be protected by the Presidential Records Act. After all, the reason there is secrecy like that under the PRA is because it’s supposed to cover advice to the President. The fear was if that advice would become public too quickly, advisors wouldn’t be able to be honest with the President. But the reason most of the rest of the executive branch is subject to FOIA is because they’re actually doing stuff, not just advising. And that information is required, under law, to be public.

I recognize, again, that the Trump administration sees laws only as things they get to use to punish those they hate, rather than anything that binds them, but I’m guessing that lawsuits are about to be filed (if they haven’t been already) challenging this designation.

So, maybe we’ll actually find out what kinds of messages Elon is trading with the guy who calls himself “Big Balls” and the guy who claimed he “was racist before it was cool.”

But only after a court gets involved. So much for “maximum transparency.”

Musk’s version of government efficiency appears to mean efficiently hiding what he and his crew are doing inside our government.

Filed Under: doge, elon musk, foia, presidential records act, transparency