马斯克会被迫解释他在DOGE内部的所作所为吗？

Will Musk ever be forced to explain what he did inside DOGE?

2026-04-13T10:00:55.725Z / CNN

Elon Musk was ubiquitous in Washington last spring, wielding unprecedented power helping the Trump administration reshape and, in some cases, dismantle federal agencies across the government.

But now, his legal adversaries can’t find him to answer questions under oath about the role he played at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in the first months of President Donald Trump’s administration.

In one case, Texas constables and others attempting to serve a plaintiffs’ deposition request went to his various properties 14 times, only to be turned away or told Musk wasn’t there.

Government lawyers have argued that the world’s richest man should be shielded from demands to answer questions — even though he is no longer a government employee.

The discovery process — a pretrial procedure in which both sides exchange evidence and identify witnesses — has been paused for more than a year in a lawsuit challenging DOGE’s dismantling of federal agencies, after the Justice Department successfully appealed an order requiring Musk to answer written questions about his role.

Changes brought about by DOGE transformed public institutions that touch on vast swaths of daily life, and though it said it found broad government savings, it has also cost taxpayer dollars and tens of thousands of jobs.

But efforts to compel Musk to answer questions in the lawsuits challenging the legality of DOGE’s actions have been met with repeated frustration. Meanwhile, the Justice Department, for a second time, has asked the Supreme Court to intervene in a dispute over discovery in a case that will determine whether DOGE is covered by federal open records law.

All these cases have raised a fundamental question: Will Musk ever be forced to explain his exercise of such sweeping power inside the federal government?

One of the most dramatic examples of how difficult it has been to get Musk to sit for questions grew out of a legal challenge to DOGE’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development.

In the civil suit,current and former USAID staffers and contractors allege Musk was behind the decision to shutter the agency, violating the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution, which under Supreme Court precedent requires officials who wield “significant authority” to be confirmed by the Senate. The case is in the discovery phase, as the plaintiffs seek information from the government that would show who issued the key decisions that dismantled the agency.

Court documents describe, in striking detail, the extraordinary effort to serve Musk with a subpoena to compel him to sit for a deposition startig at the end of last year.

Constables in Texas and private plaintiffs’ process servers tried to present Musk papers at his home in West Lake Hills, Texas, described in court filings as his primary residence. They made four additional attempts at Musk’s property in Brownsville, Texas, near his SpaceX headquarters.

The efforts spanned about three months, beginning in mid‑November 2025, and the servers said in court papers they were met with repeated resistance.

Servers have been denied entry into gated properties. At times, individuals speaking through a call box said they could not “provide any assistance or information.” On other visits, staff told servers that Musk was not home and that no one was authorized to accept paperwork on his behalf, according to court documents.

On one occasion, a man responded over the call box saying, “There is no one here by that name.” Other visits went unanswered entirely, the documents said.

Plaintiffs say they attempted to reach Musk through his attorney, also without success.

“Elon Musk publicly bragged about destroying USAID, but he and the administration have retreated into secrecy now that their unconstitutional actions are being brought to light,” Andrew Warren, deputy legal director of Democracy Defenders Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs, told CNN.

“You can’t celebrate dismantling a government agency one day and hide the receipts the next.”

A lawyer for Musk did not return a request for comment.

While Musk avoided service of the subpoena, the Trump administration was in court asking for a judge to block the deposition.

In the case brought by the USAID plaintiffs, the DOJ has said Musk should not have to be deposed by pointing to case law that protects senior government officials from being distracted from their duties by depositions.

The argument leans on a precedent set in a Supreme Court case involving then-Vice President Dick Cheney. It was also used by the Justice Department in another case brought by Democratic attorneys general last year as a sprawling challenge to Musk’s alleged role in overhauling various federal agencies.

In that case, the Justice Department secured a March 2025 appeals court order that paused plans for Musk to answer questions in writing and provide internal documents related to DOGE’s work.

But after Musk left the government, the administration also argued that his departure meant that the lawsuit’s central Appointments Clause claim should be dismissed as moot because he is no longer a public employee.

In these cases, the trial courts that are overseeing the day-to-day of the lawsuits have said that Musk should have to answer questions, only for higher courts to pause those plans.

In February,US District Judge Theodore Chuang, who is presiding over the USAID lawsuit, rejected the administration’s position that deposing Musk would “intrude on White House activities and the president’s performance of constitutional duties” because plaintiffs were focused on the actions Musk took while he was at DOGE, not his advice to the president.

But a federal appeals court reversed Chuang’s order that would have allowed Musk and other officials to be deposed. The appeals court said the plaintiffs had not done enough to seek the relevant information from other sources before demanding that Musk sit for questions.

Among the pieces of information the plaintiffs are chasing is who directed the Government Services Administration to shut down the USAID headquarters last year.

Chuang expressed some confusion about the appeals court’s order, remarking at hearing last month that “it’s unclear” what else the plaintiffs must do to show the appeals court that only Musk and the other top officials have the information they are seeking.

“I don’t think the Court of Appeals really knew because they don’t know the facts on the ground, but they need a showing of there’s really no one else who can provide this information,” Chuang said.

Musk himself has resisted or delayed sworn questioning in cases concerning his businesses, including in disputes involving federal regulators over his acquisition of Twitter, now known as X.

Musk’s move to bail last minute on a deposition in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation of his Twitter takeover even prompted a 2024 request by the agency for court sanctions. (The request was denied because Musk ultimately did sit for the deposition.)

DOGE has said that its work saved billions of dollars for the government, keeping a list on its website of the efficiencies it has found through cuts, contract renegotiations and other methods — though the accuracy of these has been heavily disputed.

According to the latest figures from the Office of Personnel Management, over 400,000 federal workers have left since Trump took office, and much of the early exodus was driven by DOGE and its decisions in the early days of the administration.

With agencies hollowed out, grants canceled, staff cut and offices shuttered, the consequences are beginning to surface in tangible ways, and experts warn they could last for years.

In their lawsuit, USAID employees argued that “the impact of this unauthorized dismantling of USAID has had disastrous consequences for the American and global public, effectively paralyzing operations that delivered life‐saving aid.”

Razia Sultana, a lawyer and human rights advocate, has witnessed the impact on the ground in Bangladesh. The US had been the largest aid provider for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh fleeing ethnic violence in Myanmar since 2017. A void in medical services has left cases like one she described to CNN in which “there was no doctor available and no emergency care” for a pregnant woman who developed complications and suffered for days from fever and pain, leading to the loss of her baby.

Other lawsuits have been spawned by knock-on effects of the DOGE cuts.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, staffing levels have fallen by roughly 30%, according to union figures. Environmental advocates say the cuts have left some communities with fewer tools to monitor pollution or hold industrial actors accountable.

For example, in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina — a region that has long struggled with soot pollution and elevated respiratory illness — an EPA grant to install air quality monitors was terminated amid DOGE cuts. The organization that was to receive the grant is a part of a lawsuit filed against the EPA over cancellation of climate and environmental justice grants.

“These communities have no idea what’s in their air,” Andrew Whelan, director of community strategy for the group, told CNN. “If you don’t have information about what it is that you’re breathing, you can’t know what actions to take to protect your family’s health.”

An EPA spokesperson told CNN the agency does not comment on pending litigation. But an official categorized the grants like the one withheld in Mecklenberg County as “wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ priorities,” that should not be a part EPA’s core mission.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which saw some 34% of its staff leave since Trump took office, fair housing advocacy groups told CNN deep staffing cuts have coincided with delays and confusion in housing discrimination investigations, leaving renters and voucher holders with fewer avenues for redress.

Martie Lafferty, executive director of the Tennessee Fair Housing Council, said fair housing cases her group has referred to HUD have gone unanswered, sometimes even being closed without notifying the filers due to lack of staffing at HUD.

“You get no confirmation your complaint has been received, there’s no staff to follow up with, and you never hear back,” Lafferty said.

A spokesperson for HUD said the Trump administration “inherited a deeply flawed and inefficient” system and that under “the leadership of President Trump and Secretary [Scott] Turner, enforcement is now focused on helping real people suffering from intentional unlawful discrimination in housing.”

Lafferty’s organization was part of a class-action lawsuit to compel HUD to release congressionally appropriated grant funding for fair housing programs. Though her group and some others eventually received the funds, not all of the grants have been released.

What remains unresolved is whether the person who was the face of the effort to dismantle and downsize these agencies will ever be required to answer, under oath, for how it was carried out and what it has left behind.

The Justice Department has historically fought aggressively in court to keep prominent government officials out of the deposition chair. But its arguments about protections that should be granted to Musk are especially convoluted, given how ill-defined his role was in the first place — and that he no longer holds it.

The precedent originally applied to Cheney to shield officials from depositions has since been stretched to officials leading other executive branch agencies, including former officials — and now, in the DOGE lawsuits, a temporary government employee who did not have a clearly described role.

“It suggests an almost lifetime immunity and suggests a level of immunity for lower officials that is typically afforded to the president and vice president,” said Anne Weismann, a former DOJ attorney who has since represented government watchdog groups, including in lawsuits involving DOGE.

The Justice Department did not return a request for comment.

The cases continue. Plaintiffs in the USAID case are deposing additional officials who could have knowledge about who made the key decisions that shuttered the agency

The case brought by state attorneys generals is now being carried forward by private organizations who say DOGE cuts have impacted their work, after the state officials dropped their lawsuit. The case was narrowed by a US district judge, but she is keeping alive its Appointments Clause claim.

The plaintiffs will have to submit a new plan for discovery, District Judge Tanya Chutkan said.

Brent Ferguson, a lawyer for Campaign Legal Center, which is representing the plaintiffs in the case, said: “We are prepared to move forward quickly to get the information we need to obtain relief for our clients,” adding: “We expect that process will uncover more details about how Musk and DOGE unlawfully dismantled federal programs vital to millions of Americans.”

CNN’s Annette Choi contributed to this report.