Musk is just an adviser with no power to make decisions, White House claims | Trump administration

Billionaire Elon Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s second presidential administration is as an Oval Office employee and senior adviser to the president – and is not an employee of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and has no decision-making authority, the White House said in a court filing on Monday.

According to a filing signed by Joshua Fisher, director of the office of administration at the White House, Musk can only advise Trump and communicate the president’s directives.

“Like other senior White House advisers, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” it said.

Fisher’s filing, made in a case brought against Musk by the state of New Mexico, said that Musk was not an employee of the US Doge Service, or the US Doge Service Temporary Organization, and added: “Mr Musk is not the US Doge service administrator.”

Doge has swept through federal agencies since Trump began his second term as president in January and put Musk, the chief executive of the carmaker Tesla, in charge of rooting out wasteful spending as part a dramatic overhaul of government that has included thousands of job cuts.

Despite Monday’s court filing, ProPublica recently reported that a number of people who have previously worked with Musk have Doge roles.