Judge Rules Trump Officials Must Testify in DOGE Data Lawsuit

A federal judge ordered Trump officials with knowledge of the workings of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to testify under oath in a lawsuit challenging the faux agency’s access to sensitive governmental databases.

U.S. District Judge John Bates determined that a coalition of federal unions represented by Democracy Forward should be allowed to conduct “very limited” discovery to clarify the extent of DOGE’s access to sensitive information and what exactly it may be doing with the data.

It’s the first lawsuit against DOGE in which plaintiffs will be allowed to obtain some evidence on the workings of Musk’s opaque agency. President Donald Trump tasked it with slashing the federal workforce as part of an effort to remake the executive branch in his own image.

Bates ruled that those representing the unions, which collectively represent four million workers, will be allowed to interview an official with DOGE and one official each at the Department of Labor, the Consumer Finance Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services — agencies in which DOGE has accessed data.

Bates limited the plaintiffs to a total of eight hours for the four depositions and specified that they can ask questions pertaining to three topics: how the agencies’ systems-access procedures changed after DOGE’s creation, the role of DOGE staffers at the agencies and those employees’ use of sensitive systems.

Neither he nor the unions specified exactly which officials will be interviewed.

In their lawsuit, the unions argued that the agencies violated the Privacy Act and could cause irreparable harm by giving DOGE access to their systems.

Read about the case here.