Judge Not Buying DOJ’s Claim That Elon Wasn’t Running DOGE

Legal Issues

from the the-emperor's-new-doge dept

Remember back in February when the DOJ told a court that, despite multiple public statements from both Elon Musk and Donald Trump to the contrary, Elon Musk was not associated one bit with DOGE and therefore should not be subject to litigation regarding DOGE’s wildly illegal actions? And remember how lots of people just kinda pretended this was fine and normal?

Well, in the ruling that Cathy Gellis just wrote about, the judge clearly recognizes the reality that Elon Musk absolutely was DOGE:

Musk, assisted by his DOGE subordinates, “continued to exercise control over USAID systems . . . to systematically block access to all systems by USAID personnel.”

Later, the judge makes it clear that the plaintiffs alleged—plausibly, despite the DOJ’s spin—that Musk ran DOGE, by his own public admissions. The judge is responding to the DOJ’s claim that Musk isn’t subject to the Appointments Clause because he had no real authority in his role. As the judge notes, nobody who wasn’t born yesterday would believe this:

This argument, however, fails to account for Plaintiffs’ allegations which strongly support the inference that Musk directed the actions to shut down USAID without authorization from any USAID official, including the closure of USAID headquarters and the removal of the USAID website, between January 31, 2025 and February 2, 2025. Consistent with its analysis in Does 1, 771 F. Supp. 3d at 668-69, such an inference is supported by the allegations in the Second Amended Complaint that Musk took a leading role in DOGE’s efforts to take physical control of USAID headquarters, including its secured spaces, and that Musk publicly took credit for the dismantling of USAID during this time period in multiple posts on X, including the February 2 and 3 posts in which he stated that “we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” that “we’re in the process of . . . shutting down USAID,” that “USAID is a criminal organization,” and that it was “[t]ime for it to die.” SAC ¶ 87-88. Collectively, these allegations support the inference that, as the de facto administrator of DOGE at the time, Musk directed these actions.

Obviously this is motion-to-dismiss posture, not a factual finding. But when a federal judge is drawing reasonable inferences from well-pleaded allegations and concluding Musk was the “de facto administrator” of DOGE, the DOJ’s “he was just an advisor with no authority” line becomes harder to sell with each filing.

Cathy had mentioned this ruling on Bluesky as she was working on her article, and apparently that alerted lawyer Kel McClanahan of a judge officially recognizing Elon as DOGE administrator.

And that matters because Kel is representing multiple clients who are suing Musk and DOGE in cases where the DOJ continues to deny Musk’s role. So Kel took this information he learned from Cathy and made sure the judges in his cases learned about it as well.

Plaintiffs respectfully draw the Court’s attention to today’s opinion in Does v. Musk, No. 25-462 (D. Md.), in which Judge Chuang finds not once but twice that the plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that Elon Musk was in charge of the “Department of Government Efficiency” or “DOGE,” however that term was defined

Now that’s service journalism at work.

Filed Under: accountability, doge, elon musk, usaid