A federal judge said Friday it appears to be “effectively inaccurate” for the Trump administration to continue to assert that Elon Musk has no formal position in operations that led to massive firing of federal workers and hocking the country's foreign aid agencies.
Judge Theodore D. Chuan of the US District Court for the District of Maryland repeatedly located government lawyers to further clarify Musk's role in cases that directly challenge government efficiency or the constitutionality of the task force known as the U.S. Dozi Services.
Until this week, government officials had resisted answering inquiries about who officially took on the task force, except that they weren't Musk. (Mr. Musk is also not among employees, the government said.) On Tuesday, White House officials said former health investment executive Amy Gleason was acting manager.
On Friday, Joshua E. Gardner, a civil division lawyer for the Department of Justice, denied that Musk played any role in government efficiency. This revealed the initiative despite Musk explicitly driving an initiative that includes an email that sought to request all federal employees to respond on the list of five achievements last weekend. The email was sent by the Human Resources Administration, but it is the federal HR department, Musk said Wednesday that he proposed it and the president approved it.
Judge Fan asked Gardner, who headed the agency, before Gleason was announced as a proxy manager. Gardner immediately corrected himself after saying he didn't ask, and he asked, but said he “didn't get the answer” beyond what it wasn't Musk. The judge said he felt the government had no answers “very suspicious.”
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 with the U.S. International Development Agency. Musk's specific target, foreign aid agencies, were rapidly dismantled in the months since Trump took office. Recently, Trump administration appointees have fired hundreds of employees who help manage responses to the emergency humanitarian crisis around the world, disrupting the agency's future.
The plaintiff's lawyers on Friday argued that Musk's operation was inherently unconstitutional, as he was not appointed by the president or approved by the Senate, as required by the constitutional appointment clause.
Musk is “the most powerful and most powerful officer in government alongside the president at present, and one of the most powerful people in our country's history,” said Norm Eisen, one of his lawyers.
He added that historically, even the White House Chief of Staff, the president's top aide, has not acted as much as Musk's authority, and there are no administrative figures. This meant that Musk's actions in the case of USAID – dispatching teams to close the program, blocking access to the system to employees and contractors, and via sensitive, confidential agent data – amounted to a “significant violation of separation of power.”
Eisen's counsel Mimi Marziani further characterized Musk's role as a “makeup position.”
The court's filing in the torrent of lawsuits challenging Musk and his fellow federal agencies provided a limited window, albeit limited, to government efficiency. As part of the only in-person account, they painted pictures of the closely managed process of small groups of government employees coming and going to the institution and grabbing data in pursuit of larger political goals.
Gardner argued that government efficiency had no attempt to shut down USAID, but rather had been subject to a “restructuring of consultations with Congress.” He added that he does not believe the president has the power to shut down the agency completely.
Judge Chuan pushed back that character and cited a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Congress, and announced that he had taken over as the proxy administrator of the USAID, saying it could be repealed consistent with applicable law.
“Wood chippers are not usually a reorganization,” Judge Chuan rebutted, appearing to refer to Musk's social media post in early February.
“I don't even know what that means, your honor,” Gardner replied.
Judge Chuan last week gave allegations to move forward with Friday's hearing to consider whether to stop Musk's team from continuing to change the agency. The hearing occurred amid an extreme shrinking of government agencies as they moved to end thousands of contracts and grants and moved to eliminate about 90% of USAID work.
Earlier this week, a federal judge in Washington gave a late-night deadline Thursday to release payments to many programs and organizations that the agency has long funded. The administration also filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, and on Wednesday night, Secretary John J. Roberts issued a temporary administrative stay.
On Friday, the plaintiffs asked Judge Chuan to block Comba via USAID data and systems as a method of short-term relief. They said their clients were stationed overseas and suffered from “physical and psychological harm” but missed payments and were separated from the agency's systems and other “potentially life-saving services.”
The judge refused to issue an immediate decision.
