DOGE Keeps Trying to Dodge the Freedom of Information Act. So We’re Suing.

The Intercept filed a lawsuit on Monday to force the Trump administration to comply with federal transparency law when it comes to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court under the Freedom of Information Act, concerns multiple FOIA requests for DOGE records. At first, DOGE simply ignored these requests while Elon Musk’s crew ransacked federal agencies and accessed sensitive data systems.

Then last Tuesday, DOGE sent a brief email to The Intercept claiming it was not subject to FOIA at all because of the way President Donald Trump established DOGE by executive order in January. “We therefore decline your request,” reads the unsigned email.

So we’re suing.

The Intercept’s lawsuit covers five different FOIA requests sent to DOGE since early March.

Three are for email communications, including correspondence from Musk himself and DOGE’s administrator, Amy Gleason, as well as emails between DOGE and members of Congress. The other two requests seek key records about DOGE’s structure and operations, such as data about its staffing and agreements between DOGE and other federal agencies.

“The Trump administration is trying to keep secret the actions of Elon Musk and DOGE. Americans have a right to know what they’re up to,” said Ben Muessig, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. “The Intercept will always fight for government transparency and accountability.”

The Intercept is the first media outlet to sue DOGE under FOIA. Since January, three government watchdog groups have sued the Trump administration to force DOGE to comply with FOIA requests, and additional lawsuits have been filed against other federal agencies for records pertaining to DOGE.

In one of the watchdog cases, a federal judge ruled in March that DOGE was likely an “agency” subject to the FOIA statute because it seemingly exercises “substantial independent authority,” the legal standard for whether an office in the executive branch falls under FOIA’s requirements. Judge Christopher Cooper declined to reconsider that ruling last week, noting that a sworn declaration from Gleason about DOGE’s operations and structure was contradicted by “by President Trump’s and Musk’s own statements.”

In other litigation against the Trump administration, two more federal judges have issued preliminary rulings that DOGE is an “agency” for purposes of other statutes besides FOIA, including the federal Privacy Act and the obscure Economy Act of 1932. One judge noted that the Trump administration has taken a “Goldilocks” stance when it comes to Musk’s crew: DOGE is “not an agency when it is burdensome but an agency when it is convenient,” the judge wrote, summarizing the government’s basic argument.

Last week, in a case challenging DOGE’s role in gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, a third federal judge ruled that Musk — who the administration claims is simply a White House senior adviser, with “no actual or formal authority” — was likely in charge, at least when DOGE took certain steps to dismantle USAID. Judge Theodore Chuang also found that DOGE “has taken numerous actions without any apparent advanced approval” of leadership at other agencies it has targeted, such as the Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Agriculture.

The Intercept is represented in the lawsuit by Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

“Elon Musk promised that DOGE would operate with ‘maximum transparency,’” said Tom Burke, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine who frequently represents media outlets in FOIA cases. “This Freedom of Information Act lawsuit holds him to his word.”