The Trump administration escalated a legal battle over transparency on Wednesday, urging the Supreme Court to intervene on an emergency basis and pause a lower court order requiring the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to release information in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued before the nation’s highest court that compelling DOGE, which he characterized as a “presidential advisory body,” to comply with discovery requests from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) “clearly violates the separation of powers.”
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Sauer further contended that the process “will significantly distract” DOGE from its “mission of identifying and eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government.”
The request stems from a lawsuit filed by CREW on February 20, following a January 24 FOIA request for documents including communications involving DOGE administrator Amy Gleason and DOGE staff, as well as financial disclosures from DOGE personnel. CREW stated it sought the documents ahead of Congressional deliberations on a federal funding bill.
At the heart of the current dispute is CREW’s request for expedited discovery to determine if DOGE qualifies as an “agency” subject to FOIA. This includes seeking to depose Gleason and obtain lists of government contracts, grants, employees, and positions that DOGE recommended for cancellation or termination.
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U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper had largely granted CREW’s discovery motion and ordered DOGE to respond quickly. On May 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to stay Judge Cooper’s order, describing the discovery allowed as “narrow” and “modest.”
Just one week later, Sauer brought the matter to the Supreme Court. He emphasized that Judge Cooper had “granted expedited, intrusive discovery into a presidential advisory body to address whether that advisory body is exempt from FOIA.”
Sauer argued such an order pre-emptively gives CREW “a significant part of the information it would obtain were it to prevail on the merits of its FOIA arguments,” and “offends the separation of powers by compromising the ‘necessity’ for confidentiality that allows presidential advisors to provide ‘candid, objective’ advice and communication.”
Chief Justice John Roberts has instructed CREW to file its response to the government’s request by noon on Friday, May 23.
President Donald Trump established DOGE on January 20 with the stated goal to “further the President’s agenda by ‘modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.’”
While not a cabinet-level department, DOGE has reportedly been influential in the administration’s efforts to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
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