An ethics board are asking "what happened" under Elon Musk during his brief time as head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
DOGE was established early into Donald Trump's second term as president, but Musk, who headed up the department tasked with cutting government waste, left the administration by the end of May. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington representatives are still trying to establish what happened while Musk was in charge of the department.
CREW deputy chief counsel Nikhel Sus, speaking to The Guardian, said, "I know it feels like all this happened over the course of several years, but the first year of this administration isn’t even done. We still want to know what happened, and we still want the record to be out there, because the public is entitled to this information."
"There are still very basic questions about DOGE's operational structure and activities that have not been answered because the entity has evaded transparency laws and evaded discovery requests," Sus added. "Let’s say DOGE's influence wanes for some temporary period. They could immediately come back in a very strong and decisive way in which they’re operating similar to how they did at the outset of the administration. They would have the apparatus to do that."
Musk has since admitted the department was only "somewhat successful" and that he would probably not re-enter government or the department.
He told former DOGE aide Katie Miller, "We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful." Asked whether he would go back and do it again, he replied, "I mean, no, I don’t think so. Would I do it? I mean, I probably... I don't know."
It comes as a political analyst believes the impact of Musk's time in government, albeit brief, will "be felt for years to come". The New Republic's Hafiz Rashid believes the department failed in its aim to cut government spending.
He wrote, "Musk’s decimation of USAID will be felt for years to come. The end of its many life-saving programs around the world has already killed hundreds of thousands of people, and if those programs don’t receive a new source of funding, millions of the world’s destitute will suffer even further. Musk called it a 'criminal organization' that 'needs to die.'"