FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2025 — President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to use the Presidential Records Act’s giant loopholes to hide records for the Department of Government Efficiency. 404 Media’s Jason Koebler reports that staff at the U.S. Digital Service, which is being rebranded as the U.S. DOGE Service, will transition from being a Federal Records Act entity into a Presidential Records Act entity.
This means the public will have to wait until 2034 to file Freedom of Information Act requests for DOGE records, and hope they aren’t destroyed before then.
The following statement can be attributed to Lauren Harper, our first Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF):
“DOGE’s activities are rapidly reshaping the federal government and the public needs to understand what it’s doing. That won’t be possible unless Congress immediately fixes the Presidential Records Act.
“If DOGE is subject to the Presidential Records Act instead of the Federal Records Act, this means that President Donald Trump, who famously tried to flush his records down a toilet, ultimately gets to decide which DOGE records will be destroyed and which will be preserved. This also means that the public won’t be able to file Freedom of Information Act requests with DOGE until five years after the end of the current Trump administration — which won’t be until 2034. By then, how many DOGE records will be intact?
“This should serve as a wake-up call for Congress to fix the Presidential Records Act so the public doesn’t have to worry that more records may end up being flushed.”
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