New Watchdog Group Seeks Records About Efficiency Department's Talks With Agencies

[highplainsdem]

Source: NYT

A watchdog nonprofit said Wednesday that it was asking 16 federal agencies to detail any interactions they have had with Elon Musk’s new budget-cutting effort, the Department of Government Efficiency.

The nonprofit, State Democracy Defenders Fund, says it wants to protect the democratic process and the rule of law. It was founded last year by Norman Eisen, who was an ethics official during the Obama administration and served as counsel to the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump administration.

Mr. Eisen’s new group says its initial focus during President-elect Donald J. Trump’s second term will be the Department of Government Efficiency — which, despite its official-sounding name, is not a government department but a loosely organized effort run by Mr. Musk and another wealthy entrepreneur, the former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

-snip-

Mr. Eisen said that his group was sending public-records requests to agencies, asking for copies of any emails or other correspondence with the department’s representatives. They also asked for any communications between federal officials and Mr. Trump’s transition team that reference Mr. Musk’s budget-cutting effort.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/us/politics/doge-records.html

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Eisen's Bluesky post about this: https://bsky.app/profile/normeisen.bsky.social/post/3ldlnjpreus23

[riversedge]

1. Glad to see this.

[William Seger]

2. Good. I fear there won't be much that can be done to stop this vandalism

... but we certainly shouldn't stop tracking what they do and making it public.

[Hekate]

3. This is a good test to see if FOIA still works or not

[maxsolomon]

4. There shouldn't be a single instance of contact before MFer is installed.

DOGE isn't a Govt agency.

[TimeToGo]

5. Or after

For the same reason.