‘Get Your Own Lawyer’: DOGE Staffers Recall Turmoil After Trump-Musk Blowup
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
A Friday report from Politico detailed the chaos inside the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in early June, when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s dramatic public split with President Donald Trump sent the agency he’d built into freefall, with one senior figure warning, “Get your own lawyer… Elon’s great, but you need to watch your own back.”
According to Politico’s Sophia Cai and Daniel Lippman, 12 DOGE staffers who had been “sleeping since February” on the sixth floor of the General Services Administration headquarters packed up their belongings on June 5, the day Musk wrote on X that “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files.”
Without Musk, whom many staffers believed was their “protector” and “could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon,” the young engineers felt “suddenly exposed,” wrote Cai and Lippman.
Later that June night, dozens of employees gathered on the roof of the GSA building for what Politico described as “something akin to a wake.” Senior DOGE figure Donald Park tried to keep morale up, telling staffers they were still “brothers in arms” and insisting Musk “would continue to protect them.” But other leaders were far more blunt, urging staff to lawyer up as the White House sought “a clean break” from the scandal-plagued operation.
In the weeks that followed, Politico explains that DOGE fractured into rival factions. One group wanted to “burrow in the government to protect themselves,” while others, like Pentagon DOGE staffer Yinon Weiss, pushed to work in collaboration with the Presidential Personnel Office.
Musk deputy Steve Davis, who had been left off the White House’s scheduled end-of-May farewell for Musk and was “unceremoniously” announced as out, told staff it would be “business as usual,” prompting what one former official described as an “internal purge” against anyone who questioned his authority. As Politico reported, “Despite being let go by the White House, he intended to stay on as the de facto head of DOGE.”
Despite his failed effort, between May and June, “dozens of DOGE employees left their posts,” Politico reported, as Trump aides moved to “root out Davis’ influence.” The once-powerful operation, whose governmental cuts sparked national backlash, ultimately collapsed into “a quieter, more dispersed version” of itself, with its former leaders, including Musk and Davis, now preparing to reunite in Austin this weekend.
