WASHINGTON: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who was chosen by US President Donald Trump to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is currently working as a White House employee and senior adviser to the president and he is not an employee of DOGE and has no decision-making authority, the White House detailed on Monday in a court filing.
Elon Musk can communicate the president’s directives and can advise the president, said Joshua Fisher, director of the Office of Administration at the White House.
In the court filing which was signed by Joshua Fisher, the White House stated “Like other senior White House advisors, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” Reuters reported.
The case came up in court as the State of New Mexico sued Elon Musk. Fisher’s filing in the court came up in the matter and detailed that Musk was not an employee of US DOGE Service, or the US DOGE Service Temporary Organization.
“Musk is not the US DOGE Service Administrator,” Fisher said in the filing on behalf of White House.
Earlier, Elon Musk’s DOGE team hit a roadblock, with a federal judge blocking its access to US Treasury payment systems while allowing it to proceed with investigations at health, labor, and consumer protection agencies.
Since President Donald Trump began his second tenure on January 20, the DOGE has swept through the federal agencies with Musk in charge of rooting out wasteful spending as part of a dramatic overhaul of government that has included thousands of job cuts.
Agencies