Trump's bluntness powered a White House comeback. Now his words are
getting him in trouble in court
[March 20, 2025]
By CHRIS MEGERIAN and LINDSAY WHITEHURST
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s shoot-from-the-lip style kept Americans
on the edge of their seats during last year's campaign. But now that
he's speaking as a president and not as a candidate, his words are being
used against him in court in the blizzard of litigation challenging his
agenda.
The spontaneity is complicating his administration's legal positions.
Nowhere has this been clearer than in cases involving Elon Musk and the
Department of Government Efficiency, the driving force in Trump's
efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government.
The latest example came earlier this week, when U.S. District Judge
Theodore Chuang ruled that Musk had likely violated the Constitution by
dismantling the United States Agency for International Development.
The lawsuit turned on the question of whether the billionaire
entrepreneur had overstepped his authority. Justice Department lawyers
and White House officials insist that Musk is merely a presidential
adviser, not the actual leader of DOGE.
But Trump has said otherwise — in speeches, interviews and public
remarks — and Chuang quoted him extensively in his decision.
Trump most notably boasted of creating DOGE during his primetime address
to a joint session of Congress and said it was “headed by Elon Musk."
Republicans gave Musk a standing ovation, who saluted from the gallery
above the House chamber.
“Trump’s words were essential, central and indispensable,” said Norm
Eisen, one of the lawyers for USAID employees who filed the lawsuit.
“His admissions took what would have been a tough case and made it into
a straightforward one.”
The looseness with words is a shift from predecessors like President
Barack Obama, who used to say that he was careful because anything he
said could send troops marching or markets tumbling.
Trump has no such feeling of restraint, and neither do other members of
his administration like Musk.
Chuang, who is based in Maryland and was appointed by Obama, also cited
social media posts from Musk, who writes frequently on X, the platform
that he owns.
For example, Musk posted “we spent the weekend feeding USAID to the
woodchipper” on Feb. 3. The agency was being brought to a standstill at
that time, with staff furloughed, spending halted and headquarters shut
down.
"Musk’s public statements and posts ... suggest that he has the ability
to cause DOGE to act," Chuang wrote in his ruling.
Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary at the White House,
said Trump was fulfilling his campaign promise “to make the federal
government more efficient and accountable to taxpayers.”
“Rogue bureaucrats and activist judges attempting to undermine this
effort are only subverting the will of the American people and their
obstructionist efforts will fail,” he said.
Anthony Coley, who led public affairs at the Justice Department during
President Joe Biden’s administration, said statements involving civil
litigation were always coordinated between his office and the West Wing.
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Elon Musk flashes his t-shirt that reads "DOGE" to the media as he
walks on South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, Sunday, March
9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
“The words could be used to support what we’re doing or undermine
what we’re doing,” he said. “It’s a carefully choreographed effort
to make sure there was no daylight between what was said in the
court of public opinion and what could ultimately play out in the
court of law.”
In comparison to how things were done in the past, Coley said, Trump
has a “ready-fire-aim approach of doing business.”
Trump doesn't usually let legal disputes force him to turn down the
volume. During a criminal investigation over his decision to keep
classified records at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House
following his first term, Trump spoke extensively about the case in
an interview with Fox News.
Longtime defense lawyers were startled — defendants are usually
encouraged to keep mum while facing an indictment. But the situation
panned out for Trump. His legal team delayed the case, and the
special counsel's office dropped the charges after he won the
election because presidents can't be prosecuted while in office.
DOGE has been the focus of nearly two dozen lawsuits. It's often
prevailed so far in cases involving access to government data, where
several plaintiffs have struggled to convince judges to block the
organization's actions.
But it's also run into challenges, such as a lawsuit over whether
DOGE must comply with public records requests. The Trump
administration asserted in court that DOGE is part of the White
House, meaning it's exempt.
Judge Christopher Cooper, also appointed by Obama, disagreed, siding
with a government watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility
and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.
“Musk and the President’s public statements indicate that USDS" —
the original acronym for the organization that was renamed as DOGE —
"is in fact exercising substantial independent authority,” wrote
Cooper, who is based in Washington.
Cooper concluded that DOGE can "identify and terminate federal
employees, federal programs, and federal contracts. Doing any of
those three things would appear to require substantial independent
authority; to do all three surely does.”
He ordered DOGE to start responding to requests about the team’s
role in mass firings and disruptions to federal programs. The
administration unsuccessfully asked the judge to reconsider, saying
the judge “fundamentally misapprehended” the agency's structure.
Just because Musk claims credit online for deep agency cuts, doesn’t
necessarily translate to DOGE having authority in the eyes of the
law, Stanford Law School professor Michael McConnell argued in a
recent debate on the issue.
DOGE is recommending changes, he said, but it’s the agency heads who
are actually putting them into effect.
“And that’s all that the courts are going to care about as to what
the Supreme Court is going to do,” McConnell said at the debate
hosted by the National Constitution Center.
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