- In November, then President-elect Donald Trump said Elon Musk “will lead” the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump set up DOGE on his first day in office via executive order, but now the White House says Musk isn’t the one leading the office—he isn’t a part of the department at all.
Multibillionaire and presidential “first buddy” Elon Musk has been the public face of much of the Trump Administration’s cost-slashing efforts as he appears with the president in the Oval Office and publicly celebrates the work of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a task force whose name Musk himself suggested.
But Musk, despite claims he’s sleeping at DOGE headquarters, isn’t actually the head of the task force, nor does he work for it, the White House claims in a recent court filing.
In a sworn statement filed Monday, the director of the Office of Administration at the White House, Joshua Fisher, wrote that Musk “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.” The world’s richest man, the court papers read, is an “employee in the White House office,” not the leader of DOGE.
“He is not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization. Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service administrator,” Fisher wrote.
The declaration comes in response to a lawsuit filed by Democratic state attorneys general who argue that President Donald Trump’s elevation of Musk, who was never elected, violates the Constitution.
However, when Trump publicly tapped Musk to lead his cost-slashing efforts, Musk wasn’t legally the one in charge, White House filings show. In November, the Trump–J.D. Vance transition announced that Musk “will lead” the department. (At the time, Musk was to co-run DOGE with Vivek Ramaswamy, but Ramaswamy soon made his exit.) On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order on DOGE. It said there would be an administrator but did not identify who. Musk, according to the three-page filing, is not a part of DOGE at all.
Musk is a senior advisor to the president, a position he holds as a non-career “Special Government Employee,” the filing states, something the White House earlier confirmed. He can only advise Trump and communicate his directives, according to the declaration. In that way, the technology billionaire who owns and runs a number of companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, and X has a role similar to that of Anita Dunn, who was a senior advisor to former president Joe Biden, argues Fisher’s filing.
“A series of loopholes”
The filing creates a legal insulation for the Trump administration, legal and political professionals said. It creates confusion over who is ultimately responsible for the administration’s firing of federal employees, accessing sensitive data, and shuttering of congressionally established offices—all actions that multiple lawsuits have claimed are illegal as Musk loudly defends them on X.
“The White House is constructing the most defensible way to get around what is either a violation of the law or the exploitation of a series of loopholes,” said Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a government accountability watchdog. “I think they are likely being dishonest, but I cannot prove that.”
“I strongly suspect Musk is in charge of DOGE, has been referred to as such, and representations to the court to the contrary are inaccurate,” Hauser added, later noting that he is extremely skeptical that Musk would be comfortable merely offering advice.
The intention, Hauser suspects, is to shield itself from vulnerability elevated by lawsuits against the non-cabinet-level department. By calling Musk an internal senior advisor and special government employee, the administration is more protected, he suggested.
The White House, the department that became the U.S. DOGE Service, and Tesla did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
Whether the White House can get away with the claim that Musk is not running DOGE or even a part of it, despite all prior indications and appearances, is dependent on the judge, Hauser explained. "Even if insincere and dishonest,” Hauser said, the argument's impact “will come down to the extent to which the court is or is not offended by the apparent misrepresentation.”
Trump and Musk sat down for a joint interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that is set to air this evening. Days earlier, Musk appeared in the Oval Office with his son, where Trump signed executive orders and Musk spoke about the goal of DOGE while wearing a black “Make America Great Again” hat. After Trump’s election night victory, Musk, who had backed Trump to the tune of a quarter-billion dollars, wrote an op-ed sharing a first look at DOGE where he said he would serve as an outside volunteer, not a federal official or employee. Musk regularly defends the entity on his personal X account; when people talk about DOGE, they talk about Musk.
So the filing creates legal insulation for the billionaire, too.
“The declaration makes clear that Musk’s presence does not violate any federal law or constitutional provision,” said John Yoo, the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, in an email. Yoo, who has served in all three branches of government, was most recently a deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush.
In claiming he has no authority to execute the law and can only offer advice, “Musk cannot be sued for DOGE activities,” Yoo said. “As a White House advisor, Musk is really just an extension of the president himself. Any lawsuit would have to really be against the president or the United States government.”
