Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Judge Forces Musk to Testify Under Oath About DOGE and USAID AI Might Beat Brilliant AI in the Fight for Corporate America

Transcript

Judge Forces Musk to Testify Under Oath About DOGE and USAID AI Might Beat Brilliant AI in the Fight for Corporate America · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  A federal judge just told Elon Musk he cannot dodge a
• 0:03
  deposition over his role in gutting US aid.
• 0:05
  U.S. District Judge rejected Musk's
• 0:08
  legal team's attempts to invoke the apex doctrine, a shield that
• 0:12
  protects high-ranking government officials from being forced to
• 0:15
  testify. Underoath Musk left his
• 0:17
  government role back in May of 2025, and the judge pointed out
• 0:21
  that the defendants themselves acknowledged he is no longer in
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  government service. And the lawsuit was filed by
• 0:26
  anonymous current and former USAID employees who watched
• 0:29
  their agency shrink from 10,000 people to 300 under Doja's
• 0:35
  direction. So what happens when the world's
• 0:37
  richest man has to answer questions on a roath about
• 0:41
  decisions he allegedly made without any formal legal
• 0:45
  authority? Now the judge has ordered
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  depositions for two other figures tied to the USA
• 0:50
  shutdown, former acting USA Deputy administrator Peter
• 0:54
  Morocco and former Doge team lead Jeremy Lewin.
• 0:58
  We'll walk through the legal reasoning behind the judge's
• 1:01
  eight page ruling, the constitutional questions at the
• 1:04
  center of this case, the apex doctrine, and why it failed
• 1:07
  here, and how this deposition could reshape accountability for
• 1:11
  unofficial government advisors. And we'll get right into that
• 1:14
  after this very short break. Now, Elon Musk now faces sworn
• 1:19
  testimony about decisions he made during his time running
• 1:22
  DOGE operations at USAID. The judge ruled landed Tuesday
• 1:27
  and shut the door on every legal argument Musk's attorneys put
• 1:30
  forward to avoid it. The case is building towards
• 1:33
  something larger than one deposition because it tests
• 1:36
  whether people who exercise real government power in informal
• 1:39
  roles can avoid the same accountability as Senate
• 1:42
  confirmed officials. Now, the core legal mechanism
• 1:47
  Musk's team tried to use is called the APEX doctrine.
• 1:50
  It exists to protect top executives and senior government
• 1:53
  officials from being pulled into depositions that could disrupt
• 1:56
  their duties or subject them to harassment through litigation.
• 2:00
  Now, the idea is straightforward.
• 2:01
  If you run a federal agency or sit in the C-Suite, opposing
• 2:05
  counsel should first exhaust every other Ave. for the
• 2:08
  information they need before dragging you into a deposition
• 2:12
  chair. Now courts have used it to
• 2:14
  shield cabinet secretaries, agency heads and CE OS from the
• 2:18
  burden of constant litigation exposure.
• 2:21
  And Musk's lawyers argued he qualified for that same
• 2:25
  protection based on his role as a senior advisor to the
• 2:28
  president. The judge just agreed on
• 2:30
  multiple fronts. In his eight page order, he
• 2:33
  wrote that it was at best unclear whether Musk, Rocco or
• 2:37
  Lewin qualified as high-ranking officials at all.
• 2:41
  That's USA. It is not a cabinet level agency
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  and several of these individuals held acting or informal
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  positions during the relevant period.
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  Now, the ruling filed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
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  26-C1, denied the defendant's motion for a protective order
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  outright. The judge went further.
• 3:01
  He noted that the 4th Circuit, which covers Maryland where this
• 3:04
  case is proceeding, has not formally adopted the apex
• 3:07
  doctrine in the 1st place. That weakened the legal
• 3:10
  foundation of Musk's argument before the court even reached
• 3:13
  the merits. Now, even in circuits where the
• 3:15
  doctrine has more traction course typically require the
• 3:18
  party invoked it to demonstrate that the official has no unique
• 3:22
  first hand knowledge or that the same information can be obtained
• 3:26
  through other means. Now neither condition was met
• 3:28
  here. The judge also emphasized a
• 3:31
  simple fact that cut against the defense, Musk is no longer in
• 3:34
  the government. The entire premise of the apex
• 3:37
  doctrine rests on protecting a sitting officials time and
• 3:41
  ability to perform duties a sitting official.
• 3:44
  And when the official has already left, the rationale
• 3:47
  collapses. Musk stepped away from his
• 3:50
  formal Doge role in May of 2025 after describing the operation
• 3:54
  as only somewhat successful, saying he would not take on a
• 3:58
  similar project again. Now.
• 4:00
  The plaintiffs in this case are anonymous current and former
• 4:03
  USAID employees. The lawsuit alleges Appointments
• 4:06
  Clause and separation of powers violations.
• 4:09
  The argument is that Musk and his Doge buddies exercise the
• 4:12
  kind of authority that the Constitution reserves for
• 4:14
  officials who go through Senate confirmation.
• 4:18
  They made decisions to shut down USAID headquarters, take down
• 4:21
  the agency's website, and flash the workforce from 10,000 to 300
• 4:25
  people. They fired 9700 people.
• 4:32
  Now, to put the scale of that reduction in context, USAID
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  managed roughly $43 billion in appropriations in fiscal year
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  2023 and provided disaster relief and economic development
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  support across approximately 130 countries.
• 4:46
  It was the largest humanitarian aid organization in the world,
• 4:51
  and a study published in July estimated that USAID programs
• 4:54
  prevented 91,000,000 deaths over the past 2 decades. 20 years,
• 4:58
  91,000,000 deaths, including 30 million children.
• 5:03
  So Elon Musk and Doge just cut the funding for something that
• 5:09
  saved almost 100 million people. Think about that for a second.
• 5:16
  Same study warned that dismantling the agency can
• 5:19
  contribute to as many as 14,000,000 additional deaths by
• 5:22
  20-30, with roughly a third of those being children under five
• 5:27
  years old. Now, I've been digging through
• 5:30
  the stats here, 39% of you have been following the channel and I
• 5:35
  love you. Thank you so much for that.
• 5:37
  We're ever grateful for you. The other 61% of you have
• 5:41
  listened to an episode or two. I'm really grateful for you.
• 5:44
  Well, you haven't hit the follower subscribe button yet.
• 5:46
  I've been an independent journalist for the last seven
• 5:48
  years. This is my full time job.
• 5:51
  I cover Elon Musk tech spaceflight, and I'm going to
• 5:54
  continue for the next 10 years with your support.
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• 5:59
  It's one second of your time. So thank you for doing that and
• 6:02
  joining this amazing community. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 6:07
  Now the judge went into a critical gap in the defense's
• 6:10
  case. The defendants never identified
• 6:12
  any lower ranking officials who were present when the key
• 6:15
  decisions about USA were made. Most apex doctrine disputes the
• 6:20
  defense can point to deputies, assistants or mid level managers
• 6:24
  who attended the same meetings and can testify in place of the
• 6:27
  senior officials. That option did not exist here.
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  The court found that plaintiffs had shown these three witnesses
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  likely possessed first hand knowledge essential to the case
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  that the information cannot be obtained from other sources.
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  The judge wrote directly that there is no alternative to
• 6:44
  deposing Musk, Morocco and Lewin.
• 6:47
  Other defendants in this case extend beyond Musk and his DOGE
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  associates. Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
• 6:53
  State Department official Kenneth Jackson and DOGE
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  administrator Amy Gleason are also named.
• 6:59
  Now, that lineup tells you something about how tangled the
• 7:02
  lines of authority become during USAID's dismantlement.
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  Multiple departments, multiple officials enacting or informal
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  capacities, and no clear paper trails showing who authorized
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  what. The Corp previously noted that
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  defendants had not produced documentary evidence identifying
• 7:19
  which officials authorized the shutdown of USA's headquarters
• 7:22
  and its website. They also failed to provide
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  lower ranking officials who could testify in their place,
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  leaving deposition requests unanswered.
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  That absence of both documentation and alternative
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  witnesses is exactly why the judge concluded the sworn
• 7:38
  testimony is the only path forward for discovery.
• 7:43
  This ruling fits into a broader pattern of courts wrestling with
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  Doge's legal footprint over the past year.
• 7:48
  Back in early 2025, the White House filed a court declaration
• 7:52
  stating that Musk was a special government employee serving as a
• 7:56
  senior advisor to the President with no actual or formal
• 8:00
  authority to make government decisions himself.
• 8:03
  Now, previous court proceedings found the opposite that Musk
• 8:06
  effectively made decisions to dismantle USAID without formal
• 8:10
  authority or official approval. Other courts have addressed
• 8:13
  Doge's access to Agency systems with mixed results. 1 judge
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  issued A preliminary injunction blocking DOGE from accessing
• 8:22
  certain Treasury Department materials, while others denied a
• 8:26
  bid to block access to Labor Department data based on
• 8:30
  standing grounds. And in January 2026, the DOJ
• 8:34
  revealed that DOGE employees may have been properly accessed
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  Social Security information and shared agency data on 3rd party
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  servers. There'll be two DOGE employees
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  in contact with a political advocacy group seeking to
• 8:49
  analyze state voter rolls. That contradiction between
• 8:52
  official claims of limited authority and evidence of
• 8:55
  expansive action is at the heart of the constitutional questions
• 8:59
  in this case. And if Musk had no authority,
• 9:02
  then who authorized those actions?
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  If he did have authority, was it lawful without Senate
• 9:08
  confirmation? Now the deposition is designed
• 9:11
  to answer those questions. Underoath.
• 9:14
  There's no date yet. It hasn't been set for these
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  depositions. It remains unclear whether Musk,
• 9:18
  Morocco or Lauren will file further motions to delay or
• 9:22
  appeal the ruling, and the judge did leave one open door.
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  Any concerns about intruding on presidential functions could be
• 9:30
  addressed through subject matter limits on the questioning,
• 9:34
  rather than blocking the depositions entirely.
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  That signals the court wants the testimony to happen while
• 9:40
  remaining careful about separation of powers boundaries.
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  Discovery will focus on three specific areas.
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  Who made the decisions to dismantle USAID?
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  What legal authority they actually had in the precise
• 9:53
  timeline of events that led to the agency's shutdown.
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  And the court previously said those issues required additional
• 10:00
  factual development beyond what the public record and existing
• 10:03
  documents could provide.