The chaotic blitz by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has triggered legal objections across Washington, with officials in at least a half-dozen federal agencies and departments raising alarms about whether the billionaire’s assault on government is breaking the law.
Over the past two weeks, Musk’s team has moved to dismantle some U.S. agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to some of the federal government’s most sensitive payment systems. Musk has said these changes are necessary to overhaul what he’s characterized as a sclerotic federal bureaucracy and to stop payments that he says are bankrupting the country and driving inflation.
But many of these moves appear to violate federal law, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, one audio recording, and several internal messages obtained by The Washington Post. Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others.
“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School.
Specific concerns include the terms of the “deferred resignation” Musk’s team is offering to purge the civil service — which experts say runs afoul of federal spending law — and whether Musk’s staffers will use Treasury’s payment system to reverse spending that has already been approved. (Two federal employee unions sued Monday to block DOGE from accessing that system. Late Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote to Congress that DOGE associates have only “read-only” access to it.) Several federal officials said they were worried about DOGE’s taking control of government systems that hold Americans’ personal information, including student loan data, and others have raised privacy concerns about the agency’s vow to use artificial intelligence on government databases. In other instances, officials have raised concerns that DOGE associates appeared to violate security protocols by using private email addresses or not disclosing their identities on government calls.
At a more fundamental level, several legal experts and government officials expressed alarm over how Musk’s team appears to operate as a strike team, outside typical agency rules and constitutional checks on executive power.
“The big-picture constitutional worry is that there is a kind of shadow executive branch that is existing and operating and exercising power outside of the channels the Constitution and the statutes that Congress authorized,” said Blake Emerson, a professor of constitutional law at the UCLA School of Law.
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On Monday, the White House confirmed that Musk has been designated a “special government employee,” a status typically conferred on outside advisers from the private sector. Under a Trump executive order, the U.S. Digital Service, a White House office established during the Obama administration to consult on federal technology, has transformed itself into the U.S. DOGE Service. Democrats in Congress have raised objections to some of DOGE’s actions, but Republicans, who control both chambers, have not moved to rein in its activities.
In a sign of potential unease over how DOGE’s early moves are being perceived, President Donald Trump and Musk have defended the billionaire’s influence and the legality of their actions. Musk has alleged that much of the government is already violating federal law and that his efforts are a needed corrective, for instance asserting over the weekend, without offering evidence, that USAID is a “criminal organization” that should be shut down and that Treasury’s career staffers routinely commit federal crimes. Trump has also denied that Musk will be able to use his government influence to expand his personal fortune, though he did not point to specific guardrails against that.
“Those leading this mission with Elon Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities,” a White House spokesperson said.
“If there’s a conflict, then we won’t let him get near it,” Trump told reporters Monday. “We’re trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else, if not better. Where we think there’s a conflict or there’s a problem, we won’t let him go near it.”
Part of the concern has centered on the Treasury Department’s powerful payment systems, which are responsible for disbursing more than $6 trillion across the country every year. In private communications last week, a DOGE representative asked the most senior Treasury career official to halt foreign aid payments that Musk allies believed violated Trump’s executive orders, two people familiar with the matter said.
David A. Lebryk, who was at the time the acting treasury secretary, told Musk’s team that the department does not have the authority to cancel payments authorized by federal agencies, the people said. Lebryk was later ousted by Trump officials, and Bessent has since agreed to hand access to the system to DOGE officials.
On X this weekend, Musk defended using Treasury’s systems to shut down federal payments because, he said, some of those payments are being made incorrectly. “Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress,” he wrote.
Musk also pointed to U.S. law governing how payments are made. Inside Treasury, several officials mocked Musk’s tweet, which states that the U.S. government is required to complete payments properly certified by federal agencies — exactly the point Lebryk made.
Bessent wrote Congress on Tuesday that the payment system had not rejected any payments submitted by other agencies, and that no payments for Social Security or Medicare had been affected. The administration has notified recipients via several agencies that it will comply with a court injunction reversing a White House attempt to freeze all federal grants.
But Musk’s repeated statements that Treasury officials need to unilaterally shut down payments already approved by Congress and requested by agencies have alarmed numerous officials within the government, who note that the Constitution explicitly gives spending power to Congress.
Unilaterally terminating federal disbursements via Treasury’s payment networks would also almost certainly violate a 1974 budget law and due-process protections for grantees, current and former officials say.
Musk’s rapid actions have prompted other concerns within the administration as well. Last week, his allies at the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to much of the federal workforce offering to pay employees’ salaries through September if they quit now. The proposal is intended to accomplish Musk’s goal of “mass head-count reductions” in the civil service.
The memo, which bypassed typical channels, provoked greater internal legal concerns that have not previously been reported. Administration officials point out that the OPM does not have the legal authority to guarantee payments to employees — a responsibility that rests with the agencies where people work. Additionally, the executive branch cannot specifically guarantee spending not yet approved by Congress, legal experts say. Government funding is currently set to expire in March, well before the end of September.
Last Thursday, a group of officials with the White House budget office — including career employees as well as political employees appointed by Trump — met with OPM officials, two people with knowledge of the meeting said. While the meeting was described as cordial, several career budget officials told The Post that they have concerns about the legality of the offer. (Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to lead the budget office, was not at the meeting. His nomination has not yet been confirmed by the Senate.)
The budget office has also received numerous questions from agency officials asking it to confirm the legality of the OPM’s offer, and some budget personnel have not been sure how to respond. On Tuesday, the OPM circulated an FAQ document specifically addressing legal concerns, in a sign that those worries may be widespread.
Over the past two weeks, Musk’s team has moved to dismantle some U.S. agencies, push out hundreds of thousands of civil servants and gain access to some of the federal government’s most sensitive payment systems. Musk has said these changes are necessary to overhaul what he’s characterized as a sclerotic federal bureaucracy and to stop payments that he says are bankrupting the country and driving inflation.
But many of these moves appear to violate federal law, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, one audio recording, and several internal messages obtained by The Washington Post. Internal legal objections have been raised at the Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others.
“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” said David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School.
Specific concerns include the terms of the “deferred resignation” Musk’s team is offering to purge the civil service — which experts say runs afoul of federal spending law — and whether Musk’s staffers will use Treasury’s payment system to reverse spending that has already been approved. (Two federal employee unions sued Monday to block DOGE from accessing that system. Late Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote to Congress that DOGE associates have only “read-only” access to it.) Several federal officials said they were worried about DOGE’s taking control of government systems that hold Americans’ personal information, including student loan data, and others have raised privacy concerns about the agency’s vow to use artificial intelligence on government databases. In other instances, officials have raised concerns that DOGE associates appeared to violate security protocols by using private email addresses or not disclosing their identities on government calls.
At a more fundamental level, several legal experts and government officials expressed alarm over how Musk’s team appears to operate as a strike team, outside typical agency rules and constitutional checks on executive power.
“The big-picture constitutional worry is that there is a kind of shadow executive branch that is existing and operating and exercising power outside of the channels the Constitution and the statutes that Congress authorized,” said Blake Emerson, a professor of constitutional law at the UCLA School of Law.
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On Monday, the White House confirmed that Musk has been designated a “special government employee,” a status typically conferred on outside advisers from the private sector. Under a Trump executive order, the U.S. Digital Service, a White House office established during the Obama administration to consult on federal technology, has transformed itself into the U.S. DOGE Service. Democrats in Congress have raised objections to some of DOGE’s actions, but Republicans, who control both chambers, have not moved to rein in its activities.
In a sign of potential unease over how DOGE’s early moves are being perceived, President Donald Trump and Musk have defended the billionaire’s influence and the legality of their actions. Musk has alleged that much of the government is already violating federal law and that his efforts are a needed corrective, for instance asserting over the weekend, without offering evidence, that USAID is a “criminal organization” that should be shut down and that Treasury’s career staffers routinely commit federal crimes. Trump has also denied that Musk will be able to use his government influence to expand his personal fortune, though he did not point to specific guardrails against that.
“Those leading this mission with Elon Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities,” a White House spokesperson said.
“If there’s a conflict, then we won’t let him get near it,” Trump told reporters Monday. “We’re trying to shrink government, and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else, if not better. Where we think there’s a conflict or there’s a problem, we won’t let him go near it.”
DOGE challenges federal spending law
Despite Trump’s assurances, federal officials have widespread concerns about the legality of many of the Musk team’s actions, though career staffers don’t have the power to do much about it.Part of the concern has centered on the Treasury Department’s powerful payment systems, which are responsible for disbursing more than $6 trillion across the country every year. In private communications last week, a DOGE representative asked the most senior Treasury career official to halt foreign aid payments that Musk allies believed violated Trump’s executive orders, two people familiar with the matter said.
David A. Lebryk, who was at the time the acting treasury secretary, told Musk’s team that the department does not have the authority to cancel payments authorized by federal agencies, the people said. Lebryk was later ousted by Trump officials, and Bessent has since agreed to hand access to the system to DOGE officials.
On X this weekend, Musk defended using Treasury’s systems to shut down federal payments because, he said, some of those payments are being made incorrectly. “Career Treasury officials are breaking the law every hour of every day by approving payments that are fraudulent or do not match the funding laws passed by Congress,” he wrote.
Musk also pointed to U.S. law governing how payments are made. Inside Treasury, several officials mocked Musk’s tweet, which states that the U.S. government is required to complete payments properly certified by federal agencies — exactly the point Lebryk made.
Bessent wrote Congress on Tuesday that the payment system had not rejected any payments submitted by other agencies, and that no payments for Social Security or Medicare had been affected. The administration has notified recipients via several agencies that it will comply with a court injunction reversing a White House attempt to freeze all federal grants.
But Musk’s repeated statements that Treasury officials need to unilaterally shut down payments already approved by Congress and requested by agencies have alarmed numerous officials within the government, who note that the Constitution explicitly gives spending power to Congress.
Unilaterally terminating federal disbursements via Treasury’s payment networks would also almost certainly violate a 1974 budget law and due-process protections for grantees, current and former officials say.
Resignation bid prompts legal concerns
Musk’s rapid actions have prompted other concerns within the administration as well. Last week, his allies at the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to much of the federal workforce offering to pay employees’ salaries through September if they quit now. The proposal is intended to accomplish Musk’s goal of “mass head-count reductions” in the civil service.
The memo, which bypassed typical channels, provoked greater internal legal concerns that have not previously been reported. Administration officials point out that the OPM does not have the legal authority to guarantee payments to employees — a responsibility that rests with the agencies where people work. Additionally, the executive branch cannot specifically guarantee spending not yet approved by Congress, legal experts say. Government funding is currently set to expire in March, well before the end of September.
Last Thursday, a group of officials with the White House budget office — including career employees as well as political employees appointed by Trump — met with OPM officials, two people with knowledge of the meeting said. While the meeting was described as cordial, several career budget officials told The Post that they have concerns about the legality of the offer. (Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to lead the budget office, was not at the meeting. His nomination has not yet been confirmed by the Senate.)
The budget office has also received numerous questions from agency officials asking it to confirm the legality of the OPM’s offer, and some budget personnel have not been sure how to respond. On Tuesday, the OPM circulated an FAQ document specifically addressing legal concerns, in a sign that those worries may be widespread.
