Musk Trying To Shield DOGE Workers From FOIA Laws

Employees at Elon Musk’s already-embattled DOGE office have been instructed by Musk to stop communicating with one another via the agency’s Slack messaging system, and instead they need to wait until the office can be officially restructured and placed into the Executive Branch under the guidance of Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. By doing this, the office would be covered under the Presidential Records Act and therefore NOT subject to FOIA requests. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains why this is happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Elon Musk's already embattled Doge office. Uh, with, of course, we have seen the staffer who resigned after being tied to racist posts on Twitter. And then Elon went on Twitter and said, Hey, should I bring him back? And even Vice President JD Vance was like, bring the kid back. And Elon says, I'll bring the kid back then. You know, a guy who posted on Twitter, I was racist before. It was cool. And then of course we had reports, uh, uh, that came out just a couple days ago that one of the staffers at Doge was actually fired from the cybersecurity firm that he used to work for because he was leaking company secrets. So we're already having a hard enough time with these horrible little children that Elon Musk has running this office. And now, according to a new report from 4 0 4 Media, Elon is making moves to shield the communications of Doge staffers and pretty much all of the work of Doge from Freedom of Information Act requests.

He's doing it, and he, they did it in a memo. Let me, here's what the memo said. Good morning everyone. As a reminder, please refrain from using Slack at the moment while our various general counsels figure out the best way to handle the records migration to our new executive office of the President component. We'll update as soon as we have more information. Now for those who don't work in any kind of company that use Slack for, for communications, it, it's kind of like, I think the best way I could describe it is, you know, your dms on, on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, uh, maybe even like, uh, the old school a OL instant Messenger. But basically it's a way for people inside of a company to communicate with one another. Uh, you know, nothing to deceitful. All the records are of course saved, you know, within these Slack communications.

And that's what Elon's Doge doesn't want to happen because any communication within a government department becomes obviously an official message within the government. And of course, would be subjected to freedom of Information Act laws, which means a reporter could file a FOIA request and get all these communications from Doge. But now, since they've been ordered to not basically communicate openly in any kind of thing that would create a record, we won't get them because they won't exist. And then, as they said, we're trying to move over to the executive office of the president. Doing so would shield them from FOIA laws because government agencies outside of the West Wing of the Oval Office basically are subjected to FOIA laws. Anything in the West Wing is subjected to the Presidential Records Act. FOIA laws

Apply over here. They do not apply for the Presidential Records Act. Those are official communications within the West Wing of the Oval Office. They do get archived, but you do not get access to them while that individual is serving in the White House. They can claim executive privilege over it. And that is where the communications of Doge are moving. There is no reason for that. Doge was doing just fine destroying the government, working with inside the office of bed, uh, budget management or management budget, excuse me, the OMB. But because they're subjected to the FOIL laws, they're moving over to the White House under the direction of Susie Wiles. Donald Trump's chief of staff, they're doing it to hide information. They're doing it to prevent anything that they are doing from coming into the light. They are doing it to destroy transparency in this country. And just like pretty much every news story that's come out for the last three weeks, this one ought to scare the crap outta you.