At a news conference one week ago in the Oval Office, Elon Musk appeared alongside President Donald Trump to promote and defend the work of the newly created U.S. DOGE Service, which has been running roughshod over the U.S. government.

Musk assured reporters that everything he and DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, were doing was “maximally transparent.”

“Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said. “In fact, we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions are maximally transparent.”

But among the many things about DOGE that have been decidedly untransparent is apparently this: Musk somehow has no formal role with DOGE.

The White House claimed in a court filing Monday that Musk not only isn’t the administrator of DOGE, as many presumed, but he’s not even an employee. It said he is instead a White House employee.

“He is not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization,” said Joshua Fisher, director of the White House’s Office of Administration. “Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service administrator.”

There are legal reasons for the White House to draw this line, which we’ll get to.

But the first point is that this is not at all how this effort has been billed. Trump and those around him have repeatedly treated Musk as the head of DOGE and outright said that was to be his role.

When Trump first announced the enterprise in November, he said Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy “will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE’).” (Ramaswamy soon left the venture.)

“And we will create the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk,” Trump said on Dec. 22.

Trump echoed that on Jan. 19, saying, “We will create the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by a gentleman named Elon Musk.”

When administration officials have not explicitly described Musk as the head of DOGE, they have implicitly described him as being in charge of its efforts.

At that Feb. 11 news conference, Trump asked Musk to mention things that “your team” has discovered. Musk proceeded to describe things that DOGE is doing.

On Feb. 4, Musk referred to DOGE as a “we.”

“Doge has not looked at, nor is there any interest in, private financial data,” he posted on X. “What would we even do with it?”

On Feb. 12, he promoted a post from DOGE’s X account describing himself as playing a role in what DOGE was announcing.

Trump in his Super Bowl interview on Feb. 9 said Musk has “been terrific” and suggested that he has been hiring people: “He comes in with a hundred very smart people.”

The White House on Jan. 25 promoted DOGE’s cancellation of government contracts while featuring an image of Musk in the background.

And at least twice over the past week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has described Trump as dispatching Musk and DOGE to do specific things.

“Well, he has already directed Elon Musk and DOGE to do just that,” Leavitt told Fox News on Feb. 12 when asked about looking for potential government “kickbacks.”

“President Trump has directed Elon Musk and the DOGE team to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration,” Leavitt added in another Fox interview on Monday, the same day as the new court filing.

The filing is the culmination of plenty of uncertainty about Musk’s actual job status.

When Trump signed the executive order creating DOGE on Jan. 20, the order stated, “There shall be a USDS Administrator established in the Executive Office of the President who shall report to the White House Chief of Staff.”

That description fits Musk, but then the White House never actually announced an administrator. Even in its filing Monday, the White House did not clarify who the administrator is, if there is one.

The filing also claimed Musk “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”

The White House has previously said Musk is a “special government employee,” which exempts him from certain disclosure rules. (The White House has said his personal financial disclosure won’t be made public, despite the prospect of myriad conflicts of interest with Musk’s extensive business ventures.)

So why wouldn’t the White House actually put Musk in charge (at least formally)? Well, probably because a pair of lawsuits have challenged the legality of Musk’s role and actions, and putting him in charge could be a problem for the administration.

The appointments clause of the Constitution says that high-ranking officers of the United States can serve only “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Musk has not gone through any confirmation process.

A president can also appoint people known as “inferior officers,” who aren’t subject to Senate confirmation. But their positions must be formally authorized by Congress, and Trump created DOGE by executive order.

Being a mere White House adviser would mean Musk would not require any of these things. But the idea that he’s not actually in charge of DOGE is very difficult to square with all the available evidence.

And, at the very least, the whole thing doesn’t exactly scream transparency.