By Tom Hals and Jack Queen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Elon Musk is testing the limits of legal and ethical restrictions on the role of special advisers in U.S. presidential administrations, according to some legal experts and lawmakers who oppose the billionaire’s mission against what he deems wasteful government spending.
Here is a look at the legal questions arising from Musk’s activities as he seeks to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
WHAT IS MUSK’S ROLE?
The White House says Musk is a special government employee, meaning he does not get paid and is only allowed to work 130 days or fewer in a year. He is subject to some but not all conflict-of-interest and ethics rules for federal employees.
Legal experts disagree over whether Musk’s widening role in government means he needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a cabinet officer. Generally, officials who report directly to the president and enjoy high levels of autonomy over major decisions need to be Senate-confirmed.
Ethics and conflict-of-interest rules for special government employees are generally self-policed by the White House.
Trump told reporters on Monday that the billionaire had to seek White House approval for his actions.
WHAT ARE MUSK AND HIS TEAM DOING?
Musk, the Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy.
DOGE says it has canceled millions of dollars’ worth of government contracts and terminated scores of leases for what it says are underutilized buildings.
Musk and DOGE have moved to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, gained access to U.S. Treasury Department payment systems to search for fraud, and taken over the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration along with their computer systems.
OPM is the human resources arm of the U.S. government, overseeing 2.2 million government workers. From OPM, emails have been sent in the past week offering federal employees financial incentives to quit. The GSA oversees most government contracts and manages federal property.
IS MUSK ALLOWED TO DO THIS?
Some lawmakers, legal experts and advocacy groups say Musk has no authority to shut down or interfere with the work of agencies set up and funded by Congress.
Governance experts also say Musk appears to have already exceeded the mandate granted by the executive order Trump signed setting up DOGE on Jan. 20.
That order mandated it to modernize federal technology and software “to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” but Musk and his aides appear to be doing much more than simply making recommendations.
Musk’s actions have already sparked multiple lawsuits. Public interest groups sued DOGE alleging its structure violated fairness and transparency rules, and government employee unions have sued to block the Treasury Department from disclosing their personal and financial information to DOGE.
Some legal experts and government ethics groups say Musk may be violating at least three privacy laws: the Federal Information Security Management Act, the Privacy Act and section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Service code.
Those laws are generally enforced through lawsuits by people whose privacy rights have been violated.
CAN ANYONE STOP MUSK?
The heads of agencies, senior civil servants, inspectors general or the Department of Justice would in normal circumstances prevent the activities that Musk appears to be carrying out.
However, Trump has fired at least 17 inspectors general, which Democrats said was illegal. An acting federal prosecutor said on Monday the FBI was investigating people who interfered with Musk’s work.
Groups and individuals opposed to Musk could sue to block his actions on a case-by-case basis, and his work could potentially be challenged in court if he oversteps limits on the scope and duration of work for special government employees.
Congress could step in to prevent Musk and DOGE from interfering with federal agencies, though both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are controlled by Republican majorities. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer said on Wednesday his panel is working with DOGE to improve government efficiency.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Jack Queen in New York; editing by Noeleen Walder, Amy Stevens and Rod Nickel)
