Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., joined Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., sent expedited FOIA requests to DOGE Tuesday. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI |
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March 18 (UPI) — Top House Democrats filed a new Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about the Department of Government Efficiency’s operations.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., a ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, jointly filed an “expedited” FOIA request from DOGE Monday.
The filing, described in a press release Tuesday, stated that the Congressmen have demanded DOGE produce records regarding who runs the department, how much authority it has to shut down federal agencies and fire employees, and whether DOGE is “serving the interests of the American people or the interests of [Elon] Musk’s companies and his foreign customers.”
The new request also asks for the information to be returned “as soon as practicable, and no later than 20 business days” from March 17.
“By filing these FOIA requests,” said the ranking members, “The president, Mr. Musk, and DOGE can and will be held accountable to the American people, the original and ultimate source of all sovereign power in the United States of America.”
Connolly posted to X Tuesday that “Elon Musk has rooted through your data and taken a chainsaw to your government for long enough.”
“It’s time to drag DOGE out of the shadows,” he wrote.
A federal judge ruled last week that the Department of Government Efficiency will likely have to open its records to FOIA requests following a March 10 suit from government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
CREW lodged a pair of FOIA requests with the Office of Management and Budget and with DOGE in determine how it was working to conduct its “mass firings and dramatic disruptions to federal programs that have punctuated the opening weeks of President [Donald] Trump’s second term.”
The case judge agreed that DOGE was eligible for FOIA requests and decided that “the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records” CREW requested.
However, while DOGE was decreed to start sharing its documents, “on a rolling basis as soon as practicable,” no exact deadline was laid out.