The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency injunction to block lower court proceedings involving a watchdog group's Freedom of Information request for access to records and documentation from the Department of Government Efficiency.
In the request, Solicitor General John Sauer argued that DOGE, as a presidential advisory board, is not subject to FOIA, which gives the public and media organizations the right to access federal government records, reports ABC News.
The demand for information was filed earlier this year by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which sued DOGE for access to its records and its plans to overhaul the government.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is scheduled to proceed with depositions in the case, as well as document production to determine whether FOIA falls under the executive branch's protection.
Sauer, in his documentation, argued that the effort defeats the litigation's purpose and would expose private information from the executive branch.
CREW said in a statement that DOGE is continuing "to attempt to fight transparency at every level of justice" and added that the organization is looking forward "to making our case that the Supreme Court should join the District Court and Court of Appeals in allowing discovery to go forward."
In March, U.S. District Judge Chris Cooper ruled that DOGE should likely be subject to the FOIA, based on President Donald Trump's executive orders, his public statements about the efficiency office and the agency's "substantial authority over vast swathes of the federal government."
Cooper then ordered that the Office of Management and Budget and DOGE turn over records connected with CREW's FOIA requests, while allowing the watchdog group to continue a discovery process to uncover information about the case, reports Politico.
The order means the group can obtain DOGE documents and conduct a deposition in the case. Cooper has not yet ruled on the exemptions that the offices can claim to keep the information in the records secret.
Wednesday's filing is one of more than a dozen the administration has brought to the Supreme Court since Trump took office, while seeking the higher court's intervention on lower court rulings ranging from the president's immigration agenda to federal workers' layoffs.
Another emergency appeal pending before the Supreme Court involved a plan giving DOGE access to Social Security data.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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