House Republicans block Democratic effort to subpoena Elon Musk over DOGE’s access to government data
House Republicans on Wednesday temporarily blocked Democratic efforts to subpoena Elon Musk, turning back an attempt to bring the tech billionaire before Congress to answer questions about what his Department of Government Efficiency delegates are doing in federal agency computer systems.
During a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the size of the federal government, ranking member Gerry Connolly, D-Va., moved to subpoena Musk to face the committee as a witness at the “earliest possible moment.” Connolly’s Democratic colleagues supported the motion, but lost out to Republicans, tabling the motion.
Democratic calls to hear from Musk follow the ongoing DOGE-led shutdown of USAID, the alleged sidestepping of federal law at the Office of Personnel Management via an email server, and the granting of systems access at the Treasury Department to DOGE workers.
William Resh, an associate professor at University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, said during Wednesday’s hearing that some of the reported DOGE work on government IT systems could pose “substantial” risks, “particularly given the extent to which this data could be used in training foundational models that Mr. Musk and his team could use to do this data analysis. I have no idea.”
He continued: “Actually, no one has any idea exactly what servers are being used. With the access to this data, there is privileged information that the DOGE team could use to position themselves or their private interests as players in government contracts.”
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee expressed similar concerns Wednesday in a letter led by Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, writing that “DOGE is running roughshod across Federal networks, accessing untold amounts of information about Americans in complete disregard for security and privacy standards.”
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., told FedScoop in an email that “the work that DOGE is undertaking is vital to bring transparency and accountability to the federal government.”
“It is time to reign in the bloated bureaucratic spending and make the federal government more efficient and we support DOGE in this mission,” said Mace, who chairs House Oversight’s cybersecurity subcommittee.
Mace’s counterpart, ranking member Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, told FedScoop that Musk is in “an unelected, unauthorized position that’s actually raiding our government.”
“I will continue to do everything I can to hold this government accountable, and as a member of the cybersecurity subcommittee, I’m going to work hard to find some areas of collaboration with the Republicans, because there are areas where we actually do agree,” Brown said.
Brown cosigned a Tuesday letter with Connolly to Charles Ezell, OPM’s acting director, that asked for a list of information technology equipment installed at the agency during the first week of the Trump administration that was used to support mass emails. The Democratic lawmakers also want to know if any federal employee personal information has been distributed to IT systems out of the government network, and if there were any steps taken to safeguard private information in databases.
“At best, the Trump Administration’s actions at OPM to date demonstrate gross negligence, severe incompetence, and a chaotic disregard for the security of our government data and the countless services it enables our agencies to provide to the public,” the letter states.
