The judge prodded government lawyers for additional clarity on Elon Musk’s role in a case that directly challenges the constitutionality of his operation and his part in the rapid reshaping of government.
A federal judge said on Friday that it seemed “factually inaccurate” for the Trump administration to keep insisting that Elon Musk has no formal position in an operation that has led to mass firings of federal workers and the hobbling of the nation’s foreign aid agency.
The judge, Theodore D. Chuang of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, prodded government lawyers repeatedly for additional clarity on Mr. Musk’s role in a case that directly challenges the constitutionality of the task force known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or the U.S. DOGE Service.
Until this week, government officials had resisted answering inquiries as to who was formally in charge of the task force, except to say that it was not Mr. Musk. (Nor is Mr. Musk among its employees, the government said.) On Tuesday, a White House official said that Amy Gleason, a former health care investment executive, was serving as the acting administrator.
On Friday, Joshua E. Gardner, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s civil division, denied that Mr. Musk had any role with the Department of Government Efficiency. This despite Mr. Musk’s clearly driving its initiatives, including an email blasted out last weekend that attempted to require all federal employees to respond with a list of five accomplishments from the previous week. Although the email was sent by the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources arm, Mr. Musk said on Wednesday that he had suggested it and that the president had approved.
Judge Huang asked Mr. Gardner who had led the agency before Ms. Gleason was announced as acting administrator. Mr. Gardner said he had not asked, then immediately corrected himself, saying that he had asked but “was not able to get an answer” beyond that it was not Mr. Musk. The judge said he found it “very suspicious” that the government did not have an answer.
The three-hour hearing was the latest in a lawsuit filed in mid-February on behalf of 26 unnamed current and former employees or contractors of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The foreign aid agency, a particular target of Mr. Musk’s, has been rapidly dismantled in the months since Mr. Trump took office. In recent days, Trump administration appointees have fired hundreds of employees who help manage responses to urgent humanitarian crises around the world, leaving the agency’s future in turmoil.