A federal appeals court said Wednesday that Elon Musk does not have to testify at this point about his former role with the Department of Government Efficiency, saying it’s too soon to compel his testimony.
The ruling blocks a lower court, which had said he should testify in an ongoing case brought by former employees and contractors of the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development.
That case is in the legal discovery stage and the employees and contractors said they needed to heard from Mr. Musk, Peter Marocco and Jeremy Lewin, both former USAID chiefs, on the decisions that led to USAID’s shuttering.
Circuit Judge Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. a Trump appointee to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said deposing high-ranking Executive Branch officials tests the separation of powers and the plaintiffs need to have exhausted all other means of getting the information they seek.
“Deposing high-ranking officials is a measure of last, not first, resort,” he said in an opinion joined by Judge Paul Niemeyer, a George W. Bush pick.
Dissenting was Judge Roger Gregory, initially picked for the court by President Clinton, who said the lower court had made a clear case for why the three men’s testimony was needed now.
He characterized them as “relatively low-ranking officials” and it was “profoundly ordinary” that people at that level submit themselves for depositions.
And Judge Gregory said the USAID employees appeared to have already tried other ways to get the information they say the three men have,
He said the Trump administration has tried to frustrate the process before, too.
“Given the inadequate discovery responses by defendants thus far, I am deeply concerned that granting this writ of mandamus frustrates justice by broadly immunizing government officials who have historically been subject to depositions,” he wrote.
