The leaders of ethics enforcement at the Department of Government Efficiency as it descended on Washington in early 2025 remain difficult to determine, in part due to noncooperation from Elon Musk and the Trump administration, according to findings from a 17-month Government Accountability Office investigation.
A report released Wednesday was unable to identify who oversaw ethics training and vetting of DOGE officials at the start of the second Trump administration, raising questions about whether key anti-conflict measures were followed.
The 53-page document offers one of the most complete pictures yet of DOGE’s scale, identifying more than 200 personnel who were at one point linked to the White House. And yet it fails to answer fundamental questions largely because the Trump administration repeatedly ignored requests for information, investigators said.
Office of Government Ethics officials told GAO auditors they were “unsure of who is responsible for overseeing the ethics management program for DOGE personnel,” claiming such confusion wasn’t unusual at the start of a new administration, the report says.
Less than half of the agencies that were asked provided DOGE-related personnel documents, the GAO wrote. Six said they didn’t have records that matched GAO’s request, while 10 failed to respond by the deadline.
Even the picture of billionaire Musk’s role remains incomplete, investigators said, due to scarce documentation of DOGE’s leadership structure and Musk’s unwillingness to answer questions.
“We were unable to describe certain EOP positions, including Elon Musk’s position,” investigators wrote, referring to the Executive Office of the President. Attempts to reach Musk through Tesla representatives were unsuccessful, they said.
“We asked these advisors to help facilitate a meeting with Mr. Musk or obtain his written responses to questions,” they wrote. “However, we did not receive a response to our requests.”
Ethics Training
The White House assured GAO investigators that DOGE officials had been given the proper ethics and records management training, the report says, but didn’t respond to GAO’s request for training records and financial disclosures to verify the claim.
Partial records from nine agencies found delays and incomplete reviews among 64 DOGE agents.
The GAO investigation, while incomplete, found gaps in training and oversight. Personnel records from the agencies that did respond showed 38 of 64 workers filed financial disclosures, while 49 completed ethics training and 18 completed records-management training.
The administration has fought to conceal basic information about DOGE, including the details of Musk’s involvement, by arguing that it was an advisory group to the president that isn’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
Several federal district courts have nevertheless ordered the Trump administration to reveal internal information about its employees and associates. In April, a New York judge rejected the government’s argument that revealing the identities of 16 DOGE agents at the center of a data access lawsuit would expose them to threats and harassment.
But the central question — whether DOGE was a bona fide government agency with autonomy from the White House — remains undecided. If so, it could be subject to public disclosure laws. The US Supreme Court is expected to decide in the fall whether to hear the administration’s challenge in a case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government transparency group.
At least 27 of the DOGE employees identified by GAO were Special Government Employees, according to the accountability office. The designation lets a person retain private-sector jobs and other income streams while working for the government on a limited basis. The office has warned that such arrangements can create conflicts difficult to detect.
The report suggests that turnover remained remarkably high throughout Trump’s first year. By Jan. 31, 2026, at least 128 of the DOGE agents — more than half of the 206 identified — had left their original positions.
