After GAO Started Investigating DOGE, DOGE Decided To ‘Investigate’ GAO

Legal Issues

from the spidermen-pointing-at-each-other-but-only-one-is-real dept

In a brazen attempt to avoid oversight, Elon Musk’s DOGE team is now trying to “audit” the very agency tasked with auditing them. On Friday, NOTUS reported that DOGE officials showed up at the Government Accountability Office — Congress’s independent watchdog — to attempt their signature hostile takeover routine. There’s just one small problem: DOGE has no authority whatsoever over the legislative branch.

This latest overreach comes after months of DOGE attempting to position itself as some kind of revolutionary government auditor — despite lacking the expertise or process knowledge that actual auditing requires. As we’ve covered before, everything DOGE claims to be doing was already being handled by skilled professionals within government — professionals whom Musk promptly fired, like the technical experts at 18F. Real government auditors have been watching in horror as DOGE has been doing the opposite of proper auditing procedures.

The GAO’s investigation of DOGE has been building for months. For decades, the office has earned bipartisan respect for its methodical, nonpartisan audits of government operations. So when reports emerged in April that Congress’s watchdog had begun examining DOGE’s activities, it suggested serious concerns about DOGE’s operations. The GAO requested comprehensive documentation about systems access, risk assessments, and potential misuse of agency data.

Records show that the GAO—an independent auditing, research, and investigative agency for Congress—appears to be requesting comprehensive information from the agencies in question, including incident reports on “potential or actual misuse of agency systems or data” and documentation of policies and procedures relating to systems DOGE operatives have accessed, as well as documentation of policies for the agency’s risk assessments, audit logs, insider threat programs, and more.

Just last week, while DOGE was busy slashing budgets without understanding the consequences, the GAO demonstrated what actual government efficiency looks like. The office identified over $100 million in potential IT savings — real cost reductions found through careful analysis of redundant systems and unnecessary investments, not arbitrary cuts.

Cost-trimming in the US federal government is all the rage right now – and a new report finds more than $100 million in savings available to the Feds by doing nothing but eliminating redundant and unnecessary IT investments. 

Those savings are part of a much more significant $100 billion in potential cost reductions recommended by Uncle Sam’s Government Accountability Office (GAO), as detailed in the auditors’ 15th annual “fragmentation, overlap, and duplication” report, released this week. The annual federal budget is about $7 trillion total, for reference.

The contrast between GAO’s methodical approach and DOGE’s slash-and-burn tactics couldn’t be clearer.

The Register’s reporting highlighted an uncomfortable truth for DOGE supporters: when asked about DOGE’s role, GAO director Lucas-Judy diplomatically noted that while they’re “always happy if other groups want to implement our recommendations,” DOGE has largely ignored GAO’s existing work — except when cherry-picking recommendations that align with their predetermined cuts.

Rather than engage constructively with GAO’s findings, DOGE responded by attempting to assert control over the congressional watchdog itself. This move isn’t just inappropriate — it’s obviously unconstitutional. If DOGE has any authority at all (which multiple ongoing lawsuits dispute), it would be limited to executive branch agencies. Yet here they are, attempting to extend their reach into Congress’s independent oversight arm.

Elon Musk’s DOGE team is now starting to target government agencies outside of the executive branch, notifying the U.S. Government Accountability Office — the congressional watchdog that performs studies for legislators about federal waste, fraud and abuse — that it has “assigned a team” to assail that agency, according to an internal email obtained by NOTUS.

The GAO’s response was appropriately direct. In an internal email obtained by NOTUS, the office informed its staff that it had “sent a letter to the acting administrator of DOGE stating that GAO is a legislative branch agency that conducts work for the Congress. As such, we are not subject to DOGE or executive orders.” The office also notified congressional committees about DOGE’s attempted overreach.

This confrontation exposes two critical issues: first, DOGE’s constitutional illiteracy in attempting to assert executive branch authority over a congressional agency. Second, and perhaps more troubling, it reveals DOGE’s apparent strategy of trying to neutralize any meaningful oversight of its own activities.

Given Musk’s track record of lashing out when told “no,” this situation is likely to escalate. But the real story here isn’t just about DOGE’s continued incompetence — it’s about their increasingly desperate attempts to avoid actual accountability while masquerading as government watchdogs themselves.

Filed Under: congress, doge, gao