‘Can’t Get Their Lie Straight’: White House Denies Elon Musk’s DOGE Ties as Trump Shamelessly Flip-Flops on His SpaceX Buddy’s Role—Critics Suspect Cover Up
Questions continue to be raised about whether Elon Musk is in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, though he’s been introduced as such by the president for weeks.
It’s an odd question to be asked since Musk and President Donald Trump have made it clear that the tech billionaire has been in charge since the beginning of his second term. So, who is in charge of the agency?
The shell game comes during a difficult week for DOGE and its leader, assuming that’s Musk.
But in an affidavit filed on Monday, Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House Office of Administration stated that Musk is “not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or the U.S. DOGE Service temporary organization.”
Fisher goes on to say Musk’s title is “senior adviser to the president,” a role in which he has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”
The affidavit was provided to a federal court and seems to clearly contradict what the country has been led to believe.
So if not Elon, then who does lead DOGE? A man pretending to be Musk? Big Balls? (No, the infamous 19-year-old Musk lieutenant with the colorful screen name is now a senior adviser to the U.S. State Department. Seriously.)
Fisher does not say, and there’s probably a good reason for that. A technical degree of separation could make it more difficult to hold DOGE to account. And as DOGE has bulldozed through the bureaucracy in an often haphazard fashion (firing much of the entire workforce at the agency responsible for oversight of the country’s nuclear arsenal, for one)
But the Fisher filing suggests a technical degree of separation that raises new questions about DOGE accountability as lawsuits pile up and Democrats begin asking more questions. concerning data breaches in some of the federal government’s most secretive databases.
On Feb. 10, Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico introduced the “Nobody Elected Elon Musk Act” that “would ensure that Elon Musk and anyone in charge of DOGE is liable for claims against the federal government due to the illegal actions that they are taking.”
“Musk and his DOGE followers feel empowered to take illegal actions because as Special Government Employees, they face no personal or financial risk when the currently eight pending lawsuits are decided,” Stansbury said in a statement. “Instead, the American taxpayer will be left footing the bill for the chaos he is causing.”
Supporters of the bill held a rally Tuesday outside the Treasury Department, with speakers labeling Musk’s actions as a “heist,” a “takeover” and an “abuse of power.”
Democratic congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts called him a “Nazi nepo baby.”
Stansbury’s legislation would ensure that Elon Musk and anyone in charge of DOGE is liable for claims against the federal government due to the “illegal actions” that they are undertaking.
The White House compared Musk’s role to Anita Dunn, a longtime special adviser to Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
Critics are buying the categorization of Musk’s role in the Trump administration as described in the court filing.
“They can’t get their lie straight,” one X user commented.
But what, then, is Musk’s role with DOGE?
Asked to clarify Tuesday on Fox News, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a word salad of platitudes that did little to end the confusion.
“Elon Musk is a special government employee here at the White House, serving at the direction of the president of the United States, Donald Trump,” Leavitt said. “Elon Musk has been tasked with overseeing DOGE on behalf of the president and DOGE employees. DOGE folks have been onboarding at respective agencies across our federal bureaucracy as political appointees, just like any other political appointee gets on board with the new administration with the changing of hands.”
“And those individuals are helping the secretaries at all of our agencies that have been nominated and confirmed by President Trump in the United States Senate, to cut waste, fraud and abuse at these respective agencies,” she concluded. “So that’s the way DOGE has been set up and that’s the way it will continue to operate.”
Trump bragged about Musk and “his 100 geniuses” helping him implement his executive orders through DOGE during a interview on Fox News Tuesday night.
“He gets it done,” Trump said.