If breaches or insider wrongdoing by DOGE employees are suspected, DOGE’s alleged failure to maintain and make transparent required records makes investigation nearly impossible or actually impossible. Mallory Culhane reports:
The Department of Government Efficiency and top Trump administration officials are being sued over the agency’s alleged violations of federal record-keeping and transparency laws.
DOGE has made “repeated, systemic failures to preserve and produce records” under the Federal Records Act and Freedom of Information Act, the nonprofit American Oversight claims in a complaint filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
DOGE allegedly uses platforms that violate its record-keeping obligations—such as the open-source, Slack-alternative Mattermost, Google Docs, and Signal—and “lack the safeguards necessary to ensure that public records are not being wrongfully destroyed,” the nonprofit says.
[…]
American Oversight says it sent more than 30 FOIA requests to DOGE since Jan. 20 and points to four specific requests for communication records between DOGE officials containing specific words or phrases that the agency hasn’t produced. The nonprofit alleges its requested records include DOGE communications on Signal, Google Docs, and Mattermost, which “have already been removed or destroyed or may soon be.”
Read more at Bloomberg Law.
The case is Am. Oversight v. U.S. Dep’t of Gov’t Efficiency, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01251, complaint filed 4/23/25.