Nathan Cavanaugh testifies in the Authors Guild versus NEH lawsuit, detailing how his Department of Government Efficiency team terminated approximately 1,500 Biden-era grants by March 2026. Citing a $2 trillion deficit and Executive Orders 14151, 14173, and 14168, he explains that grants involving DEI, prison abolition, or LGBTQ issues were flagged as wasteful spending despite lacking specific contract violations. Although draft executive orders referenced these cuts, Cavanaugh asserts the deliberative process privilege did not apply, confirming that agency leadership signed off on mass termination notices sent via email, effectively wiping the slate clean except for America 250 and Garden of Heroes initiatives. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Authors Guild Deposition Begins00:07:28
We are now on record.
This begins videotape number one, the deposition of Nate Kavanaugh in the matter of the Authors Guild versus National Endowment for Humanities.
This deposition is being held at 100 Wall Street, Suite 1500, New York, New York, 10005.
Today's date is January 23rd, 2026, and the time is approximately 9.41 a.m. Eastern Time.
The videographer is Dylan Borsuz, representing Lasitas, and the court reporter is Lisa Ferlano, also representing Lasitas.
Will counsel all parties present please state their appearances, name they represent?
John Robinson from Jacobson Lawyers Group on behalf of the American Council for Learned Societies plaintiffs with me at council table is Kyle Snow and I'll let my colleague from the Authors Guild introduce himself.
Ian Carniave from Federal Partners on behalf of the Authors Guild Plaintiffs.
Rachel Dowd from yesterday's office for the defendants.
Good morning, Mr. Kavanaugh.
Could you raise your right hand, please?
Can somebody swear that the testimony you're about to give this matter?
Pulling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
So we got.
I do.
Thank you.
Good morning, Mr. Kavanaugh.
Could you please state your full name for the record?
Nathan Kavanaugh.
And I will start the questioning today.
We'll go for a few hours.
When I'm done, my colleague from the Authors Guild plaintiffs will ask them questions at the end.
What is your date of birth?
I was going to ask about this later, but what is special.co?
It's a technology company that I'm starting.
Oh, okay.
Do you have any other email addresses?
I do.
This is the best one to reach you that special.
Where are you currently employed?
I'm the founder and CEO of Special.
Any other employment?
No.
Any other projects you're working on?
No.
For how long have you been working on the special.co?
We legally incorporated the company on August 8th, 2025.
And could you say a little bit more about what it's going to be?
We're acquiring traditional services businesses in the U.S. and trying to make them run more efficiently using software and AI.
Do you have employees?
We do.
How many?
Two.
Have you ever been to POSE before?
No.
Have you ever given testimony in court or any other context?
No.
So you understand that you're under oath today to tell the truth?
Yes.
Counsel for the government here might object.
Do you understand that you should answer my questions, even if counsel objects?
Yes.
Let me know if you need a break at any point.
I'll try to take a break every hour or so, but just let me know.
If a question is pending, I'll ask you to answer the question before we take the break, but if you need a break, just let me know.
Aside from this case, are you a party or witness to any other litigation at the moment?
No.
Are you familiar with the case U.S. Institute of Peace v. Jackson?
I'm not familiar with the case.
What about a case Pippinser v. Doge Services?
I'm not familiar with the case.
Okay.
What did you do to prepare for this deposition today?
I met with the U.S. Attorney for about two hours.
That's it.
When was this?
Yesterday.
Was it at their offices?
Yes.
Who was there?
Rachel and her colleague.
Mary Allen.
Mary Allen.
Did you review documents in connection?
We did.
Did they help refresh your memory of the events that documents did you review?
There were many documents.
How do you want me to answer this exactly?
Whatever comes to mind, what do you remember reviewing?
Emails mostly related to the case regarding NEH.
Regarding?
The National Endowment for the Humanities and the associated grants.
What else?
Mostly a list of canceled terminated grants associated with the National Endowment for the Humanities as well.
We'll probably look at some of those lists later today, but as you're sitting here right now, do you recall which specific lists you look at?
No, there were hundreds of grants on this list and tens of emails.
So the grants, and we'll talk about this more later, the grants terminated around April 2nd.
Was the list that you looked at around that time frame, or was it earlier on?
It was around that time frame.
Yes.
And what did you discuss about that list?
What's the objection?
Privilege.
Are you instructing the witness not to answer?
I mean, don't answer to the extent that it would reveal communications that you and I had about your work in connection with NEH.
Can you repeat the question?
What did you discuss about those spreadsheets?
The rationale for which certain grants were terminated.
What other documents did you review?
I don't recall any others besides what I've already told you around emails with Michael McDonald and the team at NEH and the associated grants.
Okay.
And what did you discuss with counsel from the United States about the rationale for terminating the grants?
Objection.
I'm sorry about to answer.
Are you going to follow that?
I refuse to answer, yeah.
Okay.
You're not being represented by private counsel for purposes of today's deposition, correct?
That's right.
You understand that Ms. Dowd represents the interests of the United States.
She signed her personal attorney.
I understand.
Yes.
So you understand you're not in an attorney-client relationship with her today, right?
Yes.
And you understand you weren't in an attorney-client relationship with her yesterday?
Yes.
Okay.
But you're still objecting on the grounds of privilege to that question.
You're still refusing to answer it as to what Ms. Dowd told you yesterday relating to those spreadsheets and the rationale for terminating the grants.
It's the privilege of the United States, and that is what I'm objecting based on.
And you're are you going to follow that instruction?
Yes.
That meeting with counsel from SDNY yesterday, that was the only meeting in preparation for this deposition.
That's right.
Yes.
Did you talk with anyone else about this deposition?
I talked to my teammate from the government, Justin Fox, about the deposition, but not specific details, just that it was occurring generally.
Okay.
When did you speak with him?
I don't recall.
Recruiter Interview Details00:15:21
Maybe a few weeks ago.
Okay.
And do you remember what we talked about?
Nothing substantive, just that the deposition was occurring.
Okay.
Did he tell you that he was also going to be deposed?
What else did he say?
Nothing substantive, just that he was being deposed.
Okay.
Did you talk to anyone else from Doge, and we'll define that term later, D-O-G-E, Department of Government Efficiency, in preparation for the deposition?
not.
Anyone else from the government?
No.
I want to ask you a few questions about your background.
You attended college at Indiana University?
Yes.
College football fan?
No.
Okay.
And you were there for one year?
Yes.
What did you do after that one year?
I started my first company in California.
And what company was that?
It was called BrainBase.
What was BrainBase?
An enterprise software company.
How long were you working at BrainBase?
About six years.
Can you say a little bit more about what the company did?
You said Enterprise?
We helped Fortune 500 brands manage their intellectual property on our software.
We had about 80 employees.
It was acquired by a large public company in Canada in 2022.
And what did you do after that?
I took a break from working in the tech industry for about six months and then helped co-found another business in the technology industry.
What was that business?
It was called Flow Finance.
It was a technology-enabled accounting and finance product for small businesses.
How long were you there?
About three years.
How large was that company?
How many employees?
About 40.
And what did you do after that?
I moved from California to Florida, took another small break in working, and then joined the Department of Government Efficiency in January of 2025.
Okay.
It's a good segue.
So I did want to ask you how you first got involved with the Department of Government Beneficiency, which you might call Doge today.
That's okay.
How did you first get involved?
I was introduced to one of the recruiters at Doge through mutual investor connection.
We had a few phone calls about my background, my interest in joining Doge, and was subsequently offered a position informally to join NDC.
Who was the recruiter?
Steve Davis.
Who is Steve Davis?
He was a member of the Doge team.
And what's his background?
He's the CEO of the Boring Company.
Okay.
Of the Law Company?
The Boring Company.
And approximately when did Mr. Davis contact you?
I was introduced to Steve January 2nd of 2025, approximately.
Who introduced you to him?
Gentleman named Barish Akis.
Do you know how to spell that?
B-A-R-I-S-A-K-I-S.
What's his background?
He runs a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley called Human Capital.
And how did you know him?
I was introduced to him through a mutual investor connection in Silicon Valley.
Who was that?
Vinay Haramath.
Could you spell that, please?
V-I-N-A-Y-H-I-R-E-M-A-T-H.
And did I hear you correctly that Mr. Davis was the recruiter, the Doge recruiter who contacted?
He was not a recruiter for the Doge team.
I was introduced to him because he was a senior Doge official and he was the one that offered me a position on the team.
Okay.
Was there a recruiter?
Barish would have been informally the recruiter.
Got it.
So when Barish called you, what did he say?
We discussed my background, my interest for wanting to join Doge.
Standard interview questions around my background in technology, finance, et cetera.
And then subsequently introduced me to Steve as a second interview.
Had you expressed some interest before then to anyone about wanting to join the administration or Doge?
Not the administration specifically, but Doge generally, yes.
Okay.
When did you do that?
I don't recall, frankly.
I've always had an interest in government and politics, so this is a natural time to join, given the focus on technology and finance.
Okay.
You said that you expressed, though, that you had some interest in joining Doge?
I expressed to the Doge team that I had interest in joining.
But how did Barish know to contact you that you might be interested in this?
Because Vinay and I had a relationship, and we were talking about the Doge opportunity and that it was being formed.
He recommended that I speak to Barish about potentially joining.
Got it.
So did you and Vinay meet after the election and talk about this?
We did meet after the election virtually and had one phone call about my background, spoke a little bit more about why it'd be a good fit for Doge, and then he subsequently introduced me to Barish.
Do you remember what you told him in that conversation about why you were interested?
No.
Why were you interested?
Let me just ask you that.
I was interested because I wanted to help reduce the federal deficit.
Any other reasons?
You said that Mr. Davis offered you the job?
It was an informal offer.
It's basically, if you're interested in joining, we will assign you a first project on the Doge team.
And I said yes and subsequently started working on a project for the Doge team.
Did he interview you?
Did anyone interview you?
Barish interviewed me twice.
Steve and I had a conversation, which would have been the final interview in the process, and then I subsequently joined.
What was Barish's role with Doge, he didn't already say?
He had an informal role as a recruiter of folks from the technology industry, just given his background.
Do you know if he is employed by the government?
I don't believe so.
So aside from the individuals we've talked about so far, Mr. Davis, Barrish, Vinay, is there anyone else you spoke with in or out of the government before you joined the Doge team about joining the team?
Would have been casual conversations with family, my dad, for example, outside of that, no?
No.
Did Mr. Davis or Barish tell you what you would be doing at Doge?
No.
What did they tell you about what your responsibilities would be generally?
They did not tell me.
So you just knew, what did you know about Doge at this point?
I knew that the effort of Doge was to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion annually to as close to zero as possible, and that was really all I was told.
Did you know anything before you started about the mechanics about how the administration wanted to accomplish that goal?
No.
And you mentioned earlier that they assigned you, they said that they would assign you to a project.
Did they tell you what that project was going to be before you joined Doge?
No.
Did they mention anything specific about the National Endowment for the Humanities?
No.
Anything specific about any of the other agencies that you eventually worked at?
No.
Did you speak with Elon Musk before you joined?
No.
Speak with Amy Gleason?
No.
And do you recall the date that you first formally joined the Doge team?
I started working on my first Doge-related project in early January.
I moved to Washington, D.C. around inauguration day, January 20th, and formally started working in person a few days after that.
What was that first project?
We were building an organizational chart of the federal government to try to understand the relationship between the different agencies and the associated hierarchy.
What was the goal of that project?
Just to help the team get a better understanding of how the federal government is set up structurally.
How long did that project take?
A few days.
And did you create that organizational chart?
I was a part of helping create it.
There were multiple folks on the team.
And it was created eventually?
It was.
Is that a public document, do you know?
I believe it was public on the Doge website on Doge.gov.
Okay.
What was your title?
I didn't have a title.
Were you technically an employee of the General Services Administration?
I was a political appointee at GSA as a Schedule C employee.
Do you know why you were placed in the General Services Administration as opposed to somewhere else?
I don't.
But you would agree you were associated with the Doge team more broadly.
Yes.
Part of the Doge effort.
Yes.
There was also a U.S. Doge service.
What was that?
It was another organization within the federal government that I think was originally created under the Obama administration, and it was subsequently retooled, rebranded to onboard some of the Doge engineers to the Doge team.
So there was like a U.S. digital service, and that became the U.S. Doge Service?
I believe so.
Okay.
Did you have an understanding as to how that was different from individuals at GSA elsewhere who might be helping with the Doge effort but weren't employed by the U.S. Doge Service?
My understanding is that the general philosophy was to put engineers under the U.S. Doge Service and then non-engineers under GSA or whichever agency they would have been the best fit for.
What about lawyers, people providing legal advice to you and others?
Do you know where they were placed?
I don't.
You mentioned earlier that Justin Fox was part of the Doge team that you worked with him.
Who else from the U.S. Doge service do you recall working with while you were in the government?
Can you repeat the question?
Sorry.
Who else from the U.S. Doge Service do you recall working with while you were at the government?
There were several employees, engineers.
Frankly, it was hard to tell which agency people were onboarded with, so you wouldn't know in conversations whether they were onboarded with GSA, for example, or the U.S. Doge Service.
But presumably there were many.
Let's just go through some names of individuals.
So you said Justin Fox earlier.
Justin Fox was onboarded to GSA as well.
Okay.
So who else?
Ethan Choutran.
He, to my understanding, was also a GSA employee.
James Burnham, who I believe was a lawyer with U.S. Doge Service.
Justin Aminetti, and Jacob Altic.
Was Jacob Waltech's role?
Jacob Altek was an attorney for Doge.
What did he do?
He was a lawyer with the Doge team.
You said he was an intern.
He was a lawyer with the Doge team.
He was not an intern.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
I didn't explain this earlier.
We'll be looking at some documents today.
We'll be looking at spreadsheets.
Because the spreadsheets are hard to print out, we're just going to put them on the screen.
So we're going to do that, and I will ask you questions about them.
The first spreadsheet we're going to look at has been produced to us and Was produced to us with face label US 63328.
This is subject to the protective order.
Can you see this?
Okay, Mr. Kavanaugh.
Can you zoom in a little bit?
Yeah, I think that's good.
Have you seen this document before?
I've not.
Just looking at it, can you tell what it is?
It appears to be a list of Doge-associated team members.
That's what I thought, too.
You'll see names, last names in column B, first names in column C.
This is a tab called detaile.
So presumably these are individuals who are detailed to Doge.
The first row, I'll attack the row two.
This is Justin Aminetti, you mentioned him before.
Row three, Jacob Altic, you mentioned him too.
I don't see James Burnham on here.
But I guess my first question for you is: did you work with anyone else on this detail list?
Projection to form.
There was a lot there.
That was not a question.
I'll just shorten it to that last part.
Did you work with anyone else on this list besides Justin Aminetti, Jacob Altic, and Ethan Choutran?
And take your time.
Are you asking at all in my time in the government or just with respect to National Endowment for the Humanities?
So let's start with that all.
I worked with Ethan Shoutran.
Anyone else?
I had conversations with others on this list but didn't work with them in a formal project capacity while on Doge.
Can you provide an example of someone you had a conversation with but didn't work in a Luke Farador, Akash Boba?
What did you speak with Luke Farador about?
General colleague conversations, informal, not related to any specific Doge project.
I'm sorry, can you just provide a little bit more context about?
Luke and I saw each other in the hallway at GSA and would have casual conversations about how are you doing, just standard colleague conversations.
Anyone else?
Austin Raynor, similarly, he was a member of the Doge legal team.
I didn't speak with him in a legal capacity.
It was a similar hi, how are you doing type conversation?
Nothing specific to projects.
Anthony Armstrong Work Context00:06:00
Where were these people physically working?
It was mixed.
It depends on the person.
Where were you physically working?
I was physically working at GSA.
Okay.
On this list, who else was physically at GSA?
Ethan Choutran.
Initially, Kyle Schutt.
Occasionally, Luke Farador and Akash Boba.
And I believe that's it.
Where was Justin Aminetti physically located?
The Eisenhower building at EOP.
Okay.
This is a list of, it says detailees.
Do you know what that means?
I do know what a detaile is, yes.
What does it mean?
Generally means you are assigned from your home-based agency, in my case GSA, to another agency within the federal government.
So, how would that apply to someone like Justin Aminetti, if you know?
I don't know how it would apply to Justin Eminetti because he was a lawyer with the U.S. Doge Service.
For non-lawyers, it would be you were assigned from, for example, GSA to NEH.
Okay.
And let's look at the contractor tab.
What does this appear to be?
We could scroll up, maybe to see the first round.
I don't know.
There are more names on this list.
Just looking at them, did you work with any of them?
No.
Scroll down a little bit.
Do you work with anyone on this list?
No.
Let's go to the other tab.
Do you know any of these individuals?
Yes.
Which one?
Anthony Armstrong, Jen Balahadia, James Burnham, Ed Korstein, Steve Davis, Marco Ellas, Cole Gaudier, Adam Ramada, Brad Smith, and Christopher Stanley.
Do you know why these individuals are listed as other as opposed to Nikales or contractors?
No.
What work did you do with Anthony Armstrong?
I didn't do any work with Anthony Armstrong.
But you knew of him?
Yes.
You spoke with him?
Yes.
What was his role?
Initially, he was a senior official at OPM, Office of Personnel Management for Doge.
And what about Jennifer Vallajadia?
She was an assistant to Elon Musk.
Did you work with her?
No.
Who was the next individual on this list that you worked with?
James Burnham.
And what did you work with him on?
I didn't work with James on any specific project, but he was a senior lawyer for the Doge team.
Did you work with him in connection with the NEH?
No.
What did you work with him in connection with?
James served as an escalatory legal figure for the Doge team.
He would generally get involved in projects to the extent that one of the other mid-level attorneys could not answer a question.
How often did that happen?
Infrequently.
Would you go to him then, or would someone, one of the more junior lawyers, escalate to him?
It would mostly be a more junior lawyer would escalate to James.
Okay.
Who's the next individual on this list that you work with?
Steve Davis.
And what did you do with Mr. Davis?
Steve was effectively my manager at Doge.
Is he as effectively our manager?
Yes.
Did he oversee your work with the NEH project specifically?
No.
Which projects did he oversee?
He assigned me to work and lead the small agencies team for Doge.
Beyond assigning me that responsibility, he wasn't intimately involved in my day-to-day work.
What was the small agencies team?
The small agencies team was the team at Doge that was assigned and detailed from typically GSA to small federal agencies in the government, including NEH.
Who was on that team?
Myself, Justin Fox, Ethan Choutran, and then later Marshall Wood.
Jonathan Mendelsohn.
Initially, Jacob Altic.
Although he wasn't after a couple of months, and then Justin Eminetti took his place as the new lawyer on our team.
And what was the goal of the small agencies team?
It was to identify wasteful spend within the small agencies in the federal government.
Which agencies were those?
There were about 100 small agencies on in our scope and purview, although we were mostly focused on agencies that were in executive orders, and those were the primary focus.
How often did the small agencies team meet?
Daily.
Was there a particular time of day?
Small Agencies Team Goals00:13:58
No.
Most of the small agencies team, with the exception of Justin Eminetti, were physically present at GSA as the home base.
So you would meet at GSA every day, but the time varied?
Mostly business working hours.
And what would be discussed at these daily meetings?
It wasn't a formal daily meeting.
You showed up to GSA for work, and the nature of our work was mostly focused on the status of projects regarding the small agencies.
Okay.
We might return to that later, but I'm going to move on to now.
I think we can take our, no, we're still going through, so.
So let's move past Mr. Davis.
Who's the next individual on this list that she worked with?
I worked with Adam Ramada when I first joined the Doge team on the organizational chart that we referenced earlier.
Did you work with him in any other capacity?
No.
Who was the next individual?
Nobody else in a formal project capacity.
Okay, I think we can take this down then.
Thank you.
Were you planning to mark that as an exhibit?
I didn't catch that.
I wasn't, but.
I think you should if you're going to be asking about it.
Okay, so we will mark that as plaintiff's Exhibit 1.
And just for the record, that was US 63328.
It's a spreadsheet subject to the project of work.
About how many other GSA employees were involved with the Doge team?
I don't know.
We've talked about a few of them.
Do you think there were over 50 GSA employees working on Doge?
It was probably less than 50.
Okay.
But more than 10.
More than 10.
Is there anyone else who was employed by GSA that you worked with that we haven't talked about already?
No.
Aside from the U.S. Doge service employees we've talked about and the DSA employees affiliated with Doge, was there anyone else working as part of the Doge team?
Can you repeat the question?
Aside from the U.S. Doge service employees that we've talked about and the GSA employees affiliated with Doge, was there anyone else working as part of the Doge team?
Yes, I'm sure there were at other agencies in the federal government.
Can you provide an example?
There's a person on the list, Brad Smith, who would have worked at the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS.
He was not assigned to GSA, but was, I believe, onboarded to HHS.
Is he a political appointee?
I don't know.
So there were employees of other agencies who you would consider as part of the Doge team, but were not employees of GSA, were not employees of the U.S. Doge Service.
That's right.
How did you know they were part of the Doge team?
They would have been at our weekly or bi-weekly all-hands team meeting.
How many people were at those meetings?
It varied as the year progressed.
Initially was quite small and then grew over time.
The initial meetings that you were part of.
So you were part of Doge really from the beginning, right?
It sounds like January 2nd?
Yes.
So that initial core group, how many people were part of it at that point?
More than 10 and less than 50.
And what about by the end?
Probably over 100 and less than 150.
And by the end, I was referring to August 2025.
Is that what you understood?
Yes.
That's when you left.
Yes.
Where were these weekly meetings held?
It varied.
What were some of the locations?
Certain weeks, GSA, in other cases, the Eisenhower building, okay, to the White House.
Did people join virtually?
No.
It was all only in person?
Yes.
Who led the meetings?
Typically, Steve Davis.
Were documents that were presented to you in these meetings?
No.
Did you ever take notes?
No.
What was discussed at the meetings?
Typically updates across various federal agencies and then the respective leaders of each Doge team, for example, the small agencies team, would provide quick updates on basically major updates with respect to their work.
There was a small agencies team.
What were some of the other teams that comprised Doge?
There weren't formal teams per se.
They were mostly just related to the other large agencies.
So there was a head of the Department of Commerce, for example, a head of HHS.
Was there a team focused on diversity, equity, inclusion issues?
No.
No.
Is there any other team besides small agency teams and the agency-specific teams?
I don't believe so.
No.
You said that updates would be provided about the Doge team's work.
How were those updates conveyed?
Verbally in a group.
No PowerPoint presentations?
No.
Nothing put on a screen, shared?
No.
Do you know why there were no PowerPoint presentations or documents?
No.
You said Steve Davis led the meetings?
He would open up the meeting, and then each respective agency lead for Doge would provide their relevant update.
And how long did they take?
The updates or the entire meeting?
The entire meeting.
Sometimes 20 minutes, in other cases, two hours.
Did you talk about goals for the Doge team at these meetings?
No, there were no specific stated goals other than it was broadly understood that the mission of Doge was to reduce federal spending.
Aside from the meetings, were you ever given specific goals either as part of the small agency team or as Doge more broadly?
No.
Did Elon Musk attend these meetings?
Occasionally, yes.
About how many meetings do you think he attended?
Maybe a dozen of them.
Did he speak at these meetings?
Yes.
Do you recall what he said?
It depended on the meeting.
Let's take the first meeting.
If you recall, presumably this was your first time sitting down together with the team, talking about what you were going to do.
Was he at that meeting?
He was not at the first all-hands meeting that I attended.
Was Mr. Davis?
Yes.
And what did Mr. Davis say at that meeting?
He, I don't recall, actually.
It was probably something with respect to updates that he thought were important from other Doge team leads and was restating them first and then asked the relevant team member to provide a more substantive update.
What was the first meeting that you recall that Mr. Musk attended?
It would have been in late January, probably the first week of the administration.
And what was that meeting about?
It was a smaller group of about 20 people.
Similarly, the agency team leads were providing updates.
Elon was mostly listening and then would ask follow-up questions with respect to the update being provided.
Do you remember any of those questions that he had?
I'll be training before joining the Doge team.
I went through the standard HR onboarding process for GSA employees because I was a political appointee.
So in that context, yes, not specifically for Doge.
So aside from that, I'll call it HR training, no substantive training.
You didn't go through any substantive training before you joined Doge?
Correct.
To your knowledge, did Doge have an organization chart?
No.
Did Doge have a structure or hierarchy?
So you mentioned Steve Davis was at the top.
Did he have like a deputy?
No.
Was there otherwise a structure to Doge?
The broad structure was each agency, each large agency in the federal government, starting with the Department of Defense, Department of State, Commerce, et cetera, each had a respective Doge team lead.
And as the organization grew, there were basically subordinate employees working under that respective lead.
And there was a small agencies team as well that you were on?
I led the small agencies team for Doge.
Were there any other teams that you were part of?
No.
Did you report to anyone?
Not in a formal capacity.
In an informal capacity, it would have been Steve Davis.
Did the other agency leads reports of Mr. Davis?
I'm not sure.
And who reported to you?
Justin Fox, Ethan Choutran, and then eventually Marshall Wood and Jonathan Mendelsohn.
What was Amy Gleason's role in Doge?
I believe she was the head of the U.S. Doge Service.
And how did that relate to Mr. Davis' role?
I'm not sure if Steve had a title, so I don't know.
You understood that as a practical matter, Mr. Davis was the head, that she was the legal head of the U.S. Doge Service?
Jackson.
You can answer.
Amy Gleason was the head of the U.S. Doge Service.
I don't know what Steve's title was formally.
Did she ever lead the weekly Doge meetings?
Not the ones where I was present.
No.
Did you ever see her at the meetings?
A few times.
Do you know what her role was, aside from her title, what her actual responsibilities were?
I don't.
Did you get the sense that she had significant responsibilities at Doge?
I'm not sure.
I didn't interface with her very much.
What was your salary at GSA?
I believe it was about $120,000 annually.
And prior to working at Doge for this administration, you had no prior government experience, right?
No.
But you said you were interested in government since?
Yes.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
What prompted that interest?
I'm not sure what prompted the interest.
Did you go to any summer programs or take any classes that aligned with that interest in government service?
No.
But you just had an interest in government generally?
Just specific policy topics that were topical in each election and reading, just casual information.
It's publicly available.
Which topics?
Foreign policy, economic policy, social issues.
Or some of them?
What was that?
Social issues.
Those are just some of the topics of which I was interested in.
Did you work on any political campaigns before you worked in this administration?
No.
Did you ever go on a podcast and talk about your views on these issues before joining the administration?
No.
African Development Foundation Review00:13:26
Part of any social groups in where did you live, by the way, after college?
Los Angeles.
Los Angeles.
Okay.
Part of any social groups in Los Angeles where you discuss these issues?
No.
With others?
Did you grow up in Indiana?
I grew up in Pittsburgh.
A few more and then we'll take a parade.
What was your first assignment at Doge?
It was working on the organizational chart that we discussed previously.
What was your next assignment?
It was interviewing general services administration employees, specifically in engineering, product management, and design.
What did that entail?
It entailed interviewing team members within GSA across those functions.
How long did that project last?
A few weeks.
Was this in January, February?
Late January into early February.
Of 2025, I should be clear.
What resulted from this project?
I believe my inputs on the interviews with employees were then provided to the head of GSA when eventual RIF plans were conducted at GSA.
What was your next product after that?
I was responsible for reviewing what are called FACAs, federal advisory committees basically that exist within government agencies to try and figure out which ones are critical and which ones should be eliminated.
When was this?
Roughly early February of 2025.
How did you decide whether an advisory committee should be cut or not?
Certain committees were statutorily required and so those were not able to be cut due to statute.
Others were discretionary.
And so in that context, you would evaluate those committees with the relevant agency head to determine whether they were still needed or not.
You're not a lawyer?
I'm not a lawyer.
But you work with lawyers on that?
We did.
Do you recall recommending cutting certain advisory committees?
Yes, we did.
Which ones?
So any, when we reviewed the committees at, for example, Health and Human Services, HHS, any committee that was not statutorily required was sent to the relevant agency head and the Doge team lead at that agency to review those for elimination.
What was your next product after that?
I was asked to lead the small agencies team for Doge.
About when was that?
About the middle of February of 2025.
And was Mr. Davis who asked you to do that?
He asked me to review certain small agencies in the federal government with the context of there would be certain executive orders signed to reduce certain useless small agencies in the federal government.
So Mr. Davis identified specific agencies at that point?
I don't know if he defined the specific agencies.
The broader context was the executive orders that were about to be signed.
He told you that you would be working on a team tasked specifically with looking at smaller federal agencies.
Yes.
But you don't recall whether he identified any specific federal agencies?
I don't believe so.
I don't believe so.
And was he the one who assigned each team or did someone else assign it to the team?
The team wasn't created, so I was the first person to evaluate small agencies in the federal government for Doge.
And as that work expanded, it became a team.
But he gave you this assignment?
Yes.
Did you speak with anyone else about this assignment aside from Mr. Davis before it got underway?
I don't believe so.
So what agencies did you look at as part of the small teams project?
Small agencies team?
The entire list or initially?
Let's start initially.
There was an executive order signed in February, which was the first, I believe it was titled Commencing the Reduction of Useless Small Agencies in the Government, something to that effect.
And there were four or five small agencies on that list.
The Inter-American Foundation, the U.S. African Development Foundation, the Institute of Peace, Presidio Trust.
I don't recall if there were additional ones on that first executive order.
And of those, what was the first one that you looked at?
The Inter-American Foundation.
Okay.
What did you do there?
We met with the head of the Inter-American Foundation and tried to understand more about the operations of the agency.
What is the Inter-American Foundation?
The Inter-American Foundation provides about $50 million annually in grants to Central and South America.
And what did you determine about that agency?
Per the executive order, we were to reduce the Inter-American Foundation to its statutorily minimum required functions.
Which were?
By statute, I believe it was one or two employees, which included an agency head.
And I believe it was a general counsel.
It was basically two employees, is what was statutory required, and one grant.
Did you cut funding to the agency?
We did.
Did you cut the grant?
We did cut multiple grants.
What was the next agency you worked at?
The U.S. African Development Foundation.
What is that?
They similarly provide grants to projects in Africa.
And what did you do in relation to the African Development Foundation?
The same thing that we did with the Inter-American Foundation.
You met with the head of the agency?
We attempted to meet with the head of the agency.
Our initial request was denied despite there being an executive order.
Eventually we did meet with the head of the agency and proceeded to reduce grants and personnel.
Did you cut the agency down to what you viewed as the bare statutory requirements?
Static single form.
You can answer.
I believe so.
Did you cut funding to the agency?
We didn't directly cut funding to the agency because that wasn't in our purview.
OMB is the organization that actually cuts funding from an agency, from the federal government to the agency through federal appropriations.
We cut specific outstanding grants that the agency had already made.
And did you cut specific outstanding grants at the African Development Foundation?
We did.
Okay.
I want to talk about a few more, but I know we've been going for about an hour, so maybe let's take a break and then we'll come back.
Sure.
The time is item 31.
So we're now on the right.
The time is 1044, and we're now back on the record.
Welcome back, Mr. Kavanaugh.
We were talking about some agencies that you worked on in connection with the small agencies team at Dodge.
We've talked about two so far.
The last one was the African Development Foundation.
What was the next agency that you worked at?
The United States Institute of Peace.
Approximately, when was that?
March of 2025.
What did you do at the U.S. Institute of Peace?
We reduced the Institute of Peace to its statutory minimum.
What did that involve?
It involved terminating all the existing contracts, grants, and firing all of the employees.
So you terminated all the existing contracts, grants, and fire all the employees at the U.S. Institute of Peace?
Objection.
You think that's right?
Effectively, yes.
What's the objection?
Forum.
What's the objection?
Form.
Form in what sense?
Well, you know, I mean, you're partially just repeating what he said, but in a slightly different way.
Okay.
What did you do after the, which agency did you work at after the U.S. Institute?
I don't recall.
So it sounds like essentially you were tasked with going to each of these agencies, terminating all grants, contracts, employees that weren't statutorily necessary.
Objection.
That was the case for agencies that were listed in an executive order where the White House stated through EO that they'd be reduced to statutory minimum.
Yes.
And which agencies do you recall that applied to?
I don't recall.
It's the ones I gave you, plus there was a second executive order in March, I believe, which had another set of agencies.
But you also worked at agencies that weren't specifically referenced in an executive order.
That's right.
Right.
And what was your task there?
That was not the same task.
It was to meet with the heads of the agencies to evaluate personnel, contracts, and grants, but the mandate was not to reduce those agencies to statutory minimum.
It was just to conduct a thorough review to make sure that all spending was appropriate, given the broader mission of Doge.
And how was that mandate conveyed to you?
It wasn't explicitly conveyed to me.
How did you understand that that was your mandate?
Because when I was attached by Steve Davis to go meet with small agencies, that was the implication.
The implication, presumably that was something he said.
Objection.
No, he did not say that explicitly.
So what did he say explicitly?
Explicitly he said there would be an executive order stating that certain useless agencies be reduced to statutory minimum, starting with the ones in February.
And that's what I worked on.
But then we were talking about other agencies that weren't specifically referenced in that executive order.
If I understood your testimony correctly, you said that for those agencies, your mandate was to meet with the head of the agency and to paraphrase, identify wasteful spending.
How did you understand that was your mandate?
Objection.
I believe I had a conversation with Steve that the scope of the small agency's work would expand from just agencies that were in an executive order to other small agencies in the federal government because no one on the Doge team had been focused on those to date.
And when was this conversation?
I don't recall.
Probably in February of 2025.
Do you recall whether it was like before or after your work at USIP or?
It was around the same time.
Is it that you focused on the agencies identified in the executive order first and then you focused on other agencies?
That's correct.
Okay.
And you had a conversation with Mr. Davis and what did he say?
I don't know if it was an explicit conversation.
I might have.
I actually don't, I don't recall if there was a specific conversation where he said that you should expand the scope to other agencies that were not in the executive order.
Well, how did you know to do that then?
Well, there were other small agencies.
Intuitively, I knew that there were other small agencies in the federal government that nobody on the team was focused on.
So someone needed to go review those agencies.
You just decided that for yourself?
I believe it may have been.
I don't recall if Steve and I had a conversation about it explicitly.
Did someone convey to you that you had the authority to just decide which policies you were going to look at?
Well, the scope of the agencies in the executive orders were all small agencies.
And because I was tasked with leading the small agencies team initially with the agencies in the EO, it was natural for it within Doge to intuitively and like take be proactive in expanding your scope.
Was it your understanding that you could have looked at any small federal agency and on your own initiative decided whether to terminate branch or contracts with that agency?
No, you wouldn't understand.
No, that was not my understanding.
You would have to review that type of request with Steve before going and meeting with the head of an agency.
Ryan Leopard Email Requests00:02:32
But the idea to go to a small agency might have originated with you and then you take that to Steve?
For approval before moving forward in certain cases.
And did you do that in NEH?
No, in NEH's case, Steve and I had a short conversation where he let me know that the prior head of NEH was terminated by, I believe, the political personnel office PPO, and that there was a new acting chairman, Mike McDonald, should go and meet with.
We'll get back to that before we do.
I want to show you a document.
This is our first physical document.
We'll label it Plaintiff's 2.
This is a document-based stamp, US-61501.
Feel free to take a look.
I'll just say this is an email chain between you, Ryan Leopard, Ethan Shoutran, Justin Fox.
The top email is dated March 14th, 2025, 5.56 p.m.
The last email is dated Monday, March 10th from you to Ryan Leopard.
Do you recognize this?
Yes.
What is it?
It's an email that I sent to Ryan Leopard on March 10th, 2025.
And why did you send the email?
We asked for detail agreements for myself, Justin, and Ethan for the listed agencies here.
Why did you request that from Mr. Leopard?
Anytime we would be detailed from GSA to another agency, it would be required that Ryan Leopard, as the GSA White House liaison, signed an agreement with the respective agencies, White House liaison, to accept our detail.
So these are other agencies, other small agencies that you worked at?
Yes.
And how did you come up with this list?
Client Privilege and Caution00:04:39
These agencies initially were brought to me in the context of they would be listed in an upcoming executive order and that we were supposed to proactively be detailed to the agency in advance of that happening.
So the Institute of Museum and Library Services, was that referenced in an executive order?
I believe so.
What about the National Endowment for Humanities?
I believe it was originally listed in an EO as a draft and then was...
I'm just going to caution you not to get into specifics about things that were discussed as draft executive orders and not finalized.
Well, what's the basis for that?
Deliberate process.
And I believe that we're also attorneys involved, so the attorney clients.
Okay, well, as to deliberate process, I think the judges made clear that because this is a First Amendment case, the deliberations are highly relevant and would outweigh any privilege, even if it were potentially applicable.
She's overruled that objection in other contexts.
Well, there's a difference between deliberations about the actual decisions at issue in this case and deliberations about decisions not at issue in this case.
And this relates to a decision not at issue in this case.
And I do not think that there is any basis for asserting that deliberative process protection has no, does not exist at all because certain communications related to the actual decisions are not protected by it.
Okay, let's ask a few more questions.
We might return to this.
Was the National Endowment for the Humanities listed on an executive, referenced in an executive order?
No.
But it was referenced in a prior draft of an executive order.
Objection.
Caution you not to answer to the extent it would reveal privileged information.
Well, what specific privilege?
Both attorney client privilege and deliver process.
Okay.
Did you see draft executive orders regarding these agencies?
I believe so, yes.
How did you see them?
Were they emailed to you?
They were not emailed to me directly, but they were referenced in an email form.
Did you review those drafts?
Briefly.
So the text of the draft EO was in the body of the email and you reviewed that?
I believe so, yes.
And who sent that to you?
I don't recall.
No one sent it to me directly.
So you don't recall whether it was a lawyer or not?
It was a lawyer.
How do you know it was a lawyer?
Because the sender of the email was a lawyer for the White House.
How do you know that?
Because it was referenced in the email.
But I thought you just said you don't remember who sent you the email.
No one sent me the email directly.
How did you see it?
It was.
I actually don't recall how I first saw it, to be honest, but it was an email form.
Our view is this would not be privileged information, but we'll move on.
We return the right to move to compel.
Yeah, I'm just going to join the, yeah, basically it was language.
You joined.
I joined it.
Okay.
Okay, well, our view is that it is clearly privileged for both, as both liberal process and attorney client privilege.
I mean just briefly to respond on the record, this would appear to be relate to a core issue in the case whether the executive branch was considering and ultimately decided not to include NEH on an executive order as an agency that was supposed to be reduced to a statutory minimum.
So even assuming that the deliberative process privilege would, as an initial matter, apply in this case, it would be far outweighed by the relevance of the information.
And I don't think it has been established that this would be protected by the compliance privilege at this point.
Terminated Compacts Discussion00:05:20
So we would reserve all rights.
Reserve all rights.
And other field planters joined that as well.
Okay.
So we were talking about this document.
These were some of the agencies at which you worked.
Correct?
Correct.
Were there any agencies not on this list at which you worked during your time at Doge?
Yes.
Can you name them?
I can't name all of them.
It was an exhaustive list.
Which ones come to mind?
Millennium Challenge Corporation.
the Director of National Intelligence, AmeriCorps.
I can't recall the others right now.
Did you work at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?
I did not.
The Vera Institute?
I did not.
The National Labor Relations Board?
We met with the team of the National Labor Relations Board, but ultimately did not perform any work at that agency.
Why not?
I don't recall.
What was the meeting about with them?
It was an introductory meeting to better understand what the nature of NLRB was doing.
It was an introductory meeting.
Specifically as it relates to spending of government funds or some other issue?
It was an introductory meeting just to learn more about the scope and scale of the agency in terms of total spend, number of employees, number of offices, et cetera.
About the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation?
Sorry?
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation?
I don't recall.
I don't believe so.
What did you do at the Millennium Challenge Corporation?
We similarly met with the management leadership of MCC to understand their compacts, they call them, which is effectively a grant for foreign spend.
So we're trying to understand that, again, total number of employees, contracts, grants.
Did you terminate those compacts?
Some of them were terminated at the agency's discretion.
Doge did not have the authority to individually cancel contracts.
It was always at the discretion of the head of the agency.
Earlier we were discussing some agencies, and I don't think you said that.
Why did you emphasize that just now?
I'm sorry?
Why did you emphasize that just now?
Emphasize what, exactly?
That you had no discretion to terminate contracts?
Because you asked if I terminated compacts at MCC.
Okay, is that something you discussed with counsel during the last break?
No.
Okay, that just occurred to you just now.
Yeah, because you asked me if I terminated the compacts and I didn't.
Okay.
And what, so contracts were terminated at MCC?
I don't know if contracts were terminated, but compacts, there's a distinction.
I believe certain compacts were terminated by the head of MCC.
Okay.
What about at the DNI?
I did not terminate any personnel grants or contracts at ODI.
It was done by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of ODNI.
Well, what was your work at DNI?
We had two or three meetings with ODI's team.
One of my teammates, Marshall Wood, was the lead at that agency, not me personally.
And the nature of these meetings were effectively all the same in that context.
And what was the result of your work at DNI?
There was no direct result actually from our work.
Because of the nature of the intelligence community, there was a much longer process to be fully onboarded, such as security clearances.
After we met with their team two or three times, we realized that, and also because of my timing at Doge, we ended up not terminating anything at ODI.
Later, then realized that at their own discretion, they terminated, I think, like 25% of ODI's headcount.
but it wasn't a result of data transactions when you were working at these agencies were you working at multiple agencies at the same time or would you take one agency at a time There were generally multiple agencies ongoing at the same time, for me personally.
GSA Template and Savings Data00:07:02
I'd like to look at another document.
We'll mark this as plaintiff's exhibit three.
This is a document based stamped US 9508.
This is an April 8, 2025 email from your GSA email address to your special.co email address.
And it's attaching a spreadsheet called Deletions 330 Scorecard.
Do you recognize this?
Yes.
So you said earlier that special.co is a company that you are founding and process of founding now.
So would you sometimes forward documents from your GSA account to your special.co account?
In this case, yes, it wasn't a regular occurrence.
The reason that this was forwarded was to provide the Doge leadership team, specifically Steve Davis, with an update on the relevant savings at each agency.
Why did you do that?
To my knowledge, Steve didn't have a government email with GSA to provide him with this attachment, so it had to be sent to him directly.
Did he ask you to do that?
Yes.
What email did you send it to?
I believe it was on Signal.
So you emailed this document to yourself and then shared it with him on Signal?
I believe so, yes.
Do you recall any other documents you sent to your special.co account?
I don't.
All right, let's put the attachment on the screen.
This is US 9509, and we'll mark the spreadsheet as .264.
So this is the attachment to the email that we were just looking at, right?
I believe so.
And what are we looking at here?
This is a list of agencies for which the small agencies team was focused on and the relevant number of contracts, value, budget, et cetera, associated with each agency.
And you said that Mr. Davis asked you to send this to him?
Each Doge team lead had to report on their savings, so yes.
How is it conveyed to you that each Doge team had to report on their savings?
I believe it was discussed in the all-hands meetings that we discussed previously, that each team lead was supposed to report on their relevant savings for each agency in which they were working.
So how often would you send this to Mr. Davis?
approximately once a week.
So this shows contracts and grants terminations.
That's just what it says on the top row at various agencies, correct?
I'm sorry?
This shows terminations of contracts and grants at various agencies.
That's what it says in the top row, correct?
Correct.
Including at the National Endowment for Humanities, correct?
That's row 8.
Correct.
And it shows there's a column for ceiling and there's a column for savings, correct?
That's right.
Did you create this spreadsheet yourself?
I did not.
Who created it?
I believe the template, the blank version, was created by, I don't know who created it, and then Justin Fox typically would be the one handling the actual reporting of the savings.
So a template was provided to you.
Do you remember who provided the template?
It was likely Steve.
And then Justin Fox filled this one out on a weekly basis or thereabouts.
Thereabouts.
And he emailed it to you?
Yes.
And then you emailed it to yourself and you shared it with Mr. Davis on Singapore, correct?
In this example, yes.
Let's take a look at a document.
If you take this down, that will mark as plaintiff's Exhibit 5.
For the
record, this is Bates, labeled US 9552.
This is also an email from your GSA email address to a special.co email address, correct?
Correct.
This one is attaching a document called master reporting, correct?
Correct.
And we'll look at this attachment too.
This is U.S. 9553, and the attachment will be plaintiff's exhibit 6.
Is this the same spreadsheet we were looking at before, or is it slightly different?
The template is the same.
The agencies listed seems to have changed, as well as the associated savings.
Do you know why it's different?
The list would dynamically change depending on week to week what the latest savings were for each agency.
So I think the prior spreadsheet was called deletion scorecard, and this is called master reporting.
Were those the same, just different words for the same thing?
NEH Meeting Progress Updates00:06:05
Correct.
Okay, we can take this down.
Do you recall offhand when you first got involved with the National Medowment for the Humanity?
I believe it was March of 2025.
I don't recall the exact date.
Okay, and do you recall like the first conversation you had about the agency?
About the agency or with the agency?
About the agency.
About the agency would have been around the same time frame.
And what was that conversation?
It was the short conversation with Steve Davis that I referenced previously.
And it was your idea to go look at spending at the National Endowment for the Humanities?
It was not.
Whose idea was it?
It was Steve's idea, with the context being that the prior head of the National Endowment for the Humanities was recently terminated, and that it was to go meet with Mike McDonald, the new acting chair of NEH.
So he approached you about going to speak with Mr. McDonald at NEH?
That's right.
And was this a phone call or an in-person meeting?
This is an in-person meeting.
Was anyone else there?
No.
What specifically do you remember Mr. Davis saying besides the chair has been replaced?
I want you to go meet with Mr. McDonald.
He introduced me to Mike.
I believe he gave me his phone number and I called Mike and that was it.
What did he tell you about Mr. McDonald?
That he was previously the general counsel for the agency and that he was newly appointed in the role as acting chairman.
Did he tell you anything else?
I don't believe so.
Did he tell you that he might be amenable to Doge coming in and looking at the agency?
Actually.
I don't recall.
About how long did this conversation last?
A minute.
So you had a one-minute conversation with Mr. Davis when he told you, go look at NEH, talk to Mr. McDonald.
Do you recall anything else from the conversation?
Substantively, no.
That was the extent of the conversation.
Did you take notes during the conversation?
No.
And after you had that conversation with Mr. Davis, did you go talk to anyone else about this assignment?
I believe initially no.
And then when we first scheduled our meeting with Mike McDonald, Justin Fox was with me as a member of the small agency's team.
So he and I were in all the meetings with Mike.
Did you talk to Mr. Fox about the meeting with Mr. McDonald before you actually met?
I don't recall exactly what the conversation was, but it would have been something to the effect of we're going to go meet with the new acting chairman of NEH and evaluate what's going on at the agency.
Did you speak with, aside from that possible conversation with Mr. Fox, did you speak with anyone about NEH before you met with Mr. McDonald?
No.
What did you know about the National Endowment for the Humanities at this point?
Very little.
You had no prior experience with the agency?
Outside of research that I did prior to the first meeting with Mike, no.
What was that research?
Just browsing the NEH website, understanding key personnel, the size of the agency, etc.
But that was after Mr. Davis had that conversation with you.
That's right.
You didn't do any work in the humanities and college or anything?
No.
Okay.
Never apply for an NEH grant?
Never apply for any federal grant?
No.
Okay, so then you started working at NEH.
You said that Mr. Fox was working there with you.
Was anyone else working near NEH with you, Mr. Fox?
I don't believe so.
No.
What about Ethan Schotran?
He may have been detailed to the agency from GSA to NEH, but he wasn't physically present in any of our meetings with the NEH team.
Was he involved at all in the termination of grants at NEH?
I don't believe so.
No.
As between you and Mr. Fox, did you each have like a particular role in how you were conducting your work at any age?
No, there was no predefined role.
You were the lead, though, right?
In the first meeting with Mike and his colleague Adam, I believe is his name, we had a first meeting where I primarily led the conversation, introduced ourselves as members of the Doge team from GSA.
I led the majority of that first meeting.
Thereafter, Justin took the lead role at NEH in terms of working with Mike and Adam on reviewing their contracts and grants and personnel.
So after that first meeting, Justin played more of a hands-on role at NEH than you did.
But Justin still reported to you?
In an informal capacity, yes.
So after you started working at NEH, did you and Mr. Fox have like regular meetings to talk about your work at the agency?
We did not have regular meetings, no.
Did you have irregular meetings?
Not solely focused on NEH.
So no.
So say more about that.
You would have meetings to talk about what a variety of small agencies, and NEH would be one of them?
That's right.
How often did you have those meetings?
Well, we were in the office together every day at GSA.
So in the casual course of working, you would talk about the status of each agency and what you were working, and NEH was one of them.
Okay.
But you didn't have designated NEH?
No.
Meetings.
Did you meet with Mr. Davis to talk about your progress at NEH while you were working there?
Irregular Meetings at NEH00:03:31
No.
Did you ever update him on what you had done at NEH?
We did.
After the first meeting with Mike, I think I reported back to Steve that Mike was amenable to onboarding a Doge team and I would update him on progress as there were meaningful updates.
Okay.
And then did you provide those updates?
I believe so.
I don't remember exactly how frequently.
It wasn't on a weekly cadence outside of the scorecard that we looked at together.
How did you convey those updates?
Either in person, because in many cases Steve worked at GSA or on Signal.
Those conversations you had with Mr. Davis on Signal about NEH, do you still have those?
I do not.
Were they on your government phone or personal phone?
They were on my personal phone.
And why don't you have them anymore?
Messages automatically delete on Signal.
So when were these messages deleted?
I don't know.
Do you recall what the auto-delete setting was for your conversations with Mr. Davis?
Was it 30 days?
Was it seven days?
I don't recall.
Did anyone talk to you about your use of Signal for government work while you were the Doge employee?
Not explicitly, no.
What about implicitly?
I don't believe so.
Has anyone talked to you about your use of Signal since you left government employment?
They've not.
I'm going to show you a declaration that Michael McDonald submitted in another case, not our case, called Zacher v. Trump.
We will mark this as a plane to exhibit 7, I think this is.
I could be using it kind of throughout the deposition.
Should I read this?
Feel free to take a quick look.
I'm going to kind of guide you through it.
So no need to read it cover to cover.
But feel free to take a quick look just to get a sense of what it is.
So as you see, this is a declaration that Mr. McDonald submitted in a practical case.
You can see that on page two of the document.
Single Conversations with Fox00:03:24
Before we get into it, you had mentioned before that Mr. McDonald was amenable to Doge working at NEH.
Is that something he told you specifically?
Yeah, I believe so.
Do you recall specifically what he said?
Specifically, he said he welcomed the Doge team to be onboarded to NEH from GSA.
Did he say why?
He did not.
This was the first conversation with Michael David.
Yes.
We were talking earlier about single conversations you had with Mr. Davis.
Did you ever have single conversations with Mr. McDonald?
I don't believe so, no.
Okay.
What about others on the Doge team besides Mr. Davis?
Would you talk about your work on Signal?
Can you repeat the question, sir?
Aside from Mr. Davis, who you said you had discussions over Signal about your work at NEH, did you have single conversations with anyone else at Doge?
Probably, yes, Justin Fox.
Okay.
What about Mr. Aminetti?
I don't believe so.
No.
Those conversations you had with Fox, what were those?
General status update related topics around small agencies that we were working with.
And do you still have them?
I don't.
Those were also deleted?
They were auto-deleted by Signal.
Do you remember what the auto-delete timeframe was for your conversations with Mr. Fox?
I don't.
Do you still use Signal?
I do.
Do you have a standard auto-delete feature that you use with your single for your single?
I don't know.
I can look if you want me to.
Yeah, if you don't want to.
Please do.
It is one week.
That's a schedule that you set?
I believe it's preset by the app, but I could be wrong.
You don't recall setting it yourself changing it?
Do you have any messages with Justin Fox on Signal Now that you would have had for the last week?
Yeah.
No.
What about Mr. Davis?
No.
Anyone else from Doge?
In the last week?
Not related to anything with Doge specifically.
It would be personal conversations.
Okay.
Who was it?
It would have been Barish Akis.
All right, let's take a look at this McDonald Declaration.
Chair Lowe Review Process00:07:43
Turn your attention to paragraph six.
And I'll just read it to you.
What page are you on?
Page two of the PDF, which is the first page of the declaration.
Paragraph six.
Okay.
It says, President Trump issued Executive Order 14151 ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing on January 20th, 2025.
Executive Order 14173 ending illegal discrimination and restoring merits-based opportunity issued on January 21st, 2025.
And Executive Order 14168 defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government on January 20th, 2025, when Shelley C. Lowe was still chair of NEH.
And then continuing on to paragraph 7, it says, between January 20th and February 7th, 2025, Chair Lowe directed NEH program staff to review open grants in light of the new executive orders.
And my question is, were you involved with NEH during this time period from January 20th to February 7th?
No.
Did you talk to former Chair Lowe about this review process ever?
No.
Do you know if anyone at Doge talked to her about this review process?
So then continuing on to paragraph 8, it says, at the direction of then Chair Lowe, on February 7th, NEH's Chief Information Officer, Brett Bobley, emailed NEH program directors asking them to identify projects funded under the Biden administration that might be implicated by President Trump's executive orders.
I'm going to show you what we will mark as plaintiff's Exhibit 8.
This is base-labeled AR1,
and it's a February 7, 2025 email from Brett Bobbley to, it says Division Directors, and there are some others copied.
And it says, Dear Program Directors, here are the review criteria for reviewing all the awards from 2021 to the present.
It says, ask for OMD's January 27th, 2025 memo.
And then it goes on to ask the recipients of this email to identify certain projects that met certain criteria, such as advancing Marxist equity, transgenderism, or Green New Deal social engineering policies.
You see where it says that?
Yes.
Were you involved at all in this process?
No.
Was Doge involved in all with this process?
Not to my knowledge, no.
Do you know who came up with this criteria listed here?
I do not.
And then if we return to the declaration, if you have that in front of you still, if you look at paragraph 9, Mr. McDonald says between February 7th and March 16th, 2025, CIO Bobley created a system for staff to mark Biden-era projects on spreadsheets as either high, medium, low,
or no connection in terms of the executive orders and communicated this to NEH program directors.
Were you involved in that process at all?
I was not involved in creating that list.
No.
Were you otherwise involved?
When we met Mike McDonald for the first time, he showed us, I believe, a draft of the list that is being referenced here.
Okay.
Was Fox involved at all in the creation of that spreadsheet?
Now, looking at the Declaration, paragraph 11, it says, On March 10, 2025, President Trump terminated NEH Chair Lowe and appointed me to be acting chairman of NEH.
Was Doge involved at all in the termination of Chair Lowe?
Not to my knowledge, no.
Were you aware of any discussions about terminating Chair Lowe?
No.
Do you know why she was terminated?
The next paragraph, paragraph 12, says, on or about March 12, 2025, representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Justin Box and Nate Kavanaugh, contacted NEH to discuss and advise me on implementing the President's priorities as stated in the executive orders.
including terminating grants that a reasonable person could deem to violate the executive orders.
So, was that the first time that you contacted someone at NEH about the agency?
Yes.
And it was Mr. McDonald that you contacted?
Yes.
You said you called him?
I believe so, yes.
So did you have a phone call with him and then an in-person meeting?
Yes.
And on the phone call, who was on the phone call?
Fox?
I believe it was just me and Mike McDonald.
Okay, and what was said on that phone call?
I introduced myself briefly and said we would like to schedule an in-person meeting with myself and another colleague, Justin, in person.
And what did Mr. McDonald say?
He said, come in today and let's meet.
And did he say anything else?
I don't believe so, no.
How long did that conversation last?
I don't recall.
Just brief.
And was that the conversation where he said he welcomes Doge at the agency?
I don't believe he said that explicitly on the phone call, but he offered to post us at their office.
And then in that in-person meeting, he said that he welcomed having Adojima on board to review the agency spending.
Take a look at the next document, which we'll mark as Plaintiff's Exhibit 9.
This is Bates labeled AR3.
And this is a March 12th, 2025, 3.11 p.m. email from you to Mr. McDonald, copying Justin Fox.
Does this look familiar to you?
Yes.
You recall sending this?
Yes.
Flagged Grants Tab Analysis00:14:42
So the first paragraph says, attached is a list of grants that were awarded during President Biden's administration, January 20th, 2021 through January 19th, 2025, at NEH.
And then it's, I'll skip the next sentence.
And then it says, in summary, 1,295 grants, $376 million obligated, $54 million outlaid spent, $322 million remaining can presumably be clawed back.
And then you say, I also flagged the $25 million in grants that we referenced in our meeting in a separate tab.
So a few questions.
This summary information that you provide here in the bullet points, how did you get that information?
It's publicly available data.
On USA spending?
What did you do to generate the attachment, the spreadsheet?
Did you run a report in USA spending or something else?
We searched for NEH, used a filter for the date range mentioned here and then clicked download.
Why did you only list grants that were awarded during President Biden's administration?
Because that was what was in reference to the executive order.
What do you mean by that?
Let me find the, in paragraph six of Mike's declaration, those are the executive orders in which I'm referencing.
The executive orders referenced grants and contracts issued by the Biden administration specifically or by all active grants and contracts?
I don't understand your question.
There were grants or contracts issued at NEH and other agencies under the first Trump administration, for example, correct?
I believe so, yes.
So why did you attach a list of grants here that were issued only under the Biden administration and not prior administration?
We reviewed prior administration grants as well, but it was Mike's belief in Adam's that during the Biden administration there was a significant number of grants related to these executive orders that were issued under those four years.
And so that was the primary initial focus that Mike and Adam asked us to focus on.
When did they ask you to do that?
That would have been in our in-person meeting.
And you then generated this spreadsheet.
Correct?
Yes.
Let's take a look at it.
Actually, before we do, just a few more questions on this email.
You say after the bullets, I also flagged the 25 million grants that we referenced in our meeting in a separate tab.
What was that 25 million?
I don't recall, but if you pull up the spreadsheet, we can look at it.
Okay.
Before we do the meeting that's referenced in this email, was that in-person at NEH?
Yes.
And who was at the meeting?
It was myself, Justin Fox, Mike McDonald, and Adam, his deputy or COO.
I don't remember Adam's last name.
Wolfson?
Adam Wolfson.
So the four of you?
I believe so, yes.
And so this email was sent on March 12th in the afternoon at 3.
Do you know if the in-person meeting was earlier that day or?
It was the same day.
Same day.
About how long did the meeting last?
About an hour.
And what was said at the meeting?
I don't recall all the details in the meeting.
We introduced ourselves, explained to Mike why we were there to try and support him in reviewing the executive, basically to remain compliant with the executive orders that the White House had just signed.
Mike said he was excited to have us come in and help review the data.
And we promised him at the end of the day that we would send him a list of the grants that were outstanding under the Biden administration initially because Adam mentioned that their belief was that there was a large increase in the number of grants under this EO that were issued during that time.
That was something Adam said?
I believe so, yes.
It was both of them mutually agreeing.
And I think Adam was the one that definitively said it, and Mike agreed.
Okay.
So at the beginning of the meeting, who kicked off the meeting?
Was it you or Justin?
It was probably me just introducing myself and Justin and then they provided an intro.
Okay.
And what was their, what did they say in their intro?
I don't recall exactly.
It was their background, how long they'd been at NEH, et cetera.
Just general information about their personal backgrounds.
You say in this email that $376 million had been obligated.
What's your understanding of the term obligated in this context?
Obligated means, as I understand it, when a grant is issued to a recipient, the obligated amount is the total potential amount of funds that the recipient can receive.
All right, let's take a look at, and what's that understanding based on?
What is it based on?
That's what it means.
Okay.
Let's take a look at the spreadsheet, which is AR4.
And we'll mark this as plaintiff's exhibit 10.
So I know some of the text is cut off and we'll go through it, but can you generally see, okay, the spreadsheet?
And this is the spreadsheet that was attached to that email?
I believe so, yes.
Okay.
So you see the first tab, it says Assistance Prime Award Summaries.
Is that right?
That's right.
And that's information that you got from USA Spending?
That's right.
The second tab is called Biden Grants.
Yes.
So if you click on that one.
So these were all grants issued during the Biden administration, is that correct?
That's correct.
And then the third tab is called flagged grants?
Yes.
Okay.
What are these?
Can you zoom in?
I believe these are grants that we've identified for Mike and Adam that would have been in violation of the executive orders that were signed.
These are the only grants that you believed were in violation of the executive orders, or is this a subset of grants you identified?
As you can see from the top left on row three, this is called craziest grants, which in our view were the ones that were most obviously in violation of the executive orders.
And then if you scroll down further, there were others that were also, in our view, potentially in violation of the EOs that we flagged for their team.
And when you say in our approval view, you're referring to yourself and Mr. Fox?
Yes.
How did you come up with this list of craziest grants?
We looked at both the master list of grants on tab one and the subset of grants under the Biden administration on tab two.
When you say you looked at the grants, what do you mean?
We read the description in the relevant column.
Okay.
So we could go back and look at that, but that's typically like a paragraph, right?
A paragraph description.
Does that sound about right?
You can go back to that one.
So let's go to Biden grants maybe.
And if we can scroll over to, just look at row three here.
So looking at row three, column J, this is an example of a grant description, right?
Yes.
I'll just read the first few words.
It says documentary about Shirley Clark, founder of American Independent Film.
How do you break into the boys club of film directing?
And then it goes on for a few more sentences, right?
Yes.
So you looked at this description.
Did you look at anything else?
The primary fields we were reviewing were the description column, the amount of the grant, and then whether there were still any funds associated with the grant that were outstanding.
Did you look at anything outside of the spreadsheet?
To instruct what was going on, tab two and tab three?
Yes.
No.
So you didn't look at like grant applications?
We did not.
Or you didn't look at like the website for the grant project.
That's right.
Your review was restricted to this spreadsheet in terms of identifying grants in tab three.
The description, as you can see, is quite exhaustive.
And so, yes, we referenced the description.
In your view, that's an exhaustive accounting of the grant.
I think it's a thorough description of what the grant is related to, yes.
And then let's go back to the flagged grants tab.
There's a column on this tab called shorted description.
Yep.
What's that?
It's a summarized version of the full description on the prior tab so that it's easier for Mike and Adam to review what the grant is pertaining to.
And that's something that you generated?
Myself and Justin split the list.
Okay.
I want to ask you about a few of these.
So if we go to row 15, the shorted description, yeah, is it says examining experiences of LGBTQ military service?
And then if we go to the lawn description, which I think is the next column over maybe, I think you can stay in that flag grants and just go one over maybe lawn description.
We can expand that for a bit.
So I'll just read this one.
It says, examining military service from the margins, the complicated service discussion series will bring together veterans and community members to examine the experience of service members who identify themselves as female, black, Native American, LGBTQ, or an immigrant, the dynamics, reasoning, and strength behind serving a country that does not always serve you in return.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
You and Mr. Fox identified this as one of the craziest grants at NEH?
I don't know, go to the left.
Yes, it appears so.
Why did you do that?
because it explicitly says LGBTQ.
Let's look at another one.
Row 20.
The shorted description here is legacies of HIV AIDS prison movements in the United States.
and I'll just read the long description.
This is a history of the HIV AIDS prison movement and its legacies in the United States.
My book project narrates how activists fought the convergence of HIV/AIDS and incarceration from inside and outside prisons across the Reagan through Clinton years and argues that this organizing holds legacies in the prison abolition movement of the 1990s to today.
Drawing on archival and community-engaged research in oral history, I examine how incarcerated people organized HIV education and AIDS care work and how supporters collaborated in protests and advocacy campaigns.
The movement prolonged lives, changed policies, and confronted state-sanctioned harms with strategies for a freer and healthier society.
I argue that by fighting HIV/AIDS in prisons, activists came to confront incarceration itself, bringing feminist and queer insights into prison abolition.
My book will be of interest to scholars of history, gender, and LGBTQ studies and the medical humanities, and to general readers interested in incarceration, abolition, and the impacts of HIV/AIDS and other pandemics.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
This is one of the grants that you or Mr. Fox identified as craziest in NEH, is that right?
That's right.
Do you recall whether you identified it as craziest or whether Mr. Fox did?
I don't recall.
Why did you identify this as one of the craziest grants?
Because it references feminist and queer insights into prison abolition and LGBTQ studies.
Any other reasons?
No.
Bad Grants LGBTQ References00:07:24
There's a section later on in the spreadsheet called Bad Grants.
If we could scroll down to that.
It says other bad grants.
What were these?
So in addition to our work of identifying grants related to DEI or others in the executive orders that we referenced previously, we also helped Mike and Adam identify other potential wasteful grants outside of DEI that we thought were potential for being canceled.
Let's take a look at row 36.
So the short description here is documentary on Shirley Clark, founder of American Independent Film, DEI Films.
And I'll just read the lawn description.
It says, documentary about Shirley Clark, founder of American Independent Film.
How do you break into the boys' club of film directing?
Shirley Clark was a groundbreaking artist and a leader of the movement that created independent film in the United States.
She declared war on Hollywood by telling stories about people who had always been excluded from the big screen.
Black stories, gay stories, true stories.
She was the only American to win recognition for her independent films in the 1960s.
But then she was almost excluded herself, written out of film history.
In our film, her contributions in Extraordinary Life Come Back to Life, a timely tale of cool identity and struggle in New York City, Cannes, and Los Angeles from the 1950s to the 1980s with jazz.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
You and Mr. Fox identified this as one of the bad grants, correct?
Correct.
Why did you identify it as a bad grant?
We.
The same reason as previously.
And we did just say it again.
Sure.
We felt that it was in violation of the White House executive orders.
How so?
Can you read the description again and I'll catch you when it violates it?
I'm happy to.
It's also on the screen if you'd prefer to just take a look.
Can you go to the name of the grant again as well?
The short description is documentary on Shirley Clark, founder of American Independent Film.
Yeah, we felt it was in violation of the Executive Order 14151.
Why?
Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.
Well, that's the name of the executive order.
Why did this grant violate that executive order?
Because it references DEI.
It's literally in the name of the grant.
And the prior examples you also said were, those were on the craziest list.
You said that they were crazy because they referenced LGBTQ, correct?
Not LGBTQ specifically.
Well, what specifically?
Let's just go back.
Let's go to row 20.
This is Legacy of HIV AIDS Prison Movements in the United States.
And let's go to lawn description.
So I thought you had said that this one was crazy because it referenced LGBTQ.
Is that among other things?
So what are the other things?
We felt the latter part of the description specifically bringing feminist and queer insights into prison abolition to say gender and LGBTQ studies and so forth.
So we felt that this referenced LGBTQ and preferencing and DEI altogether.
And that made it one of the craziest grants that NEH had.
Craziest in the context of being in violation of the executive orders.
And what's crazy about studying LGBTQ issues?
Nothing on its surface, but it's craziest in its egregiousness of the violation of the executive order.
For referencing LGBTQ studies.
Based on the executive order, yes.
Looking at that bad grant, again, we were looking at row 36.
This is the document around Shirley Clark.
Can we just go back to that law and description?
I think you had said that this was bad because it referenced DEI, but it actually doesn't, I don't think.
Am I wrong about that?
Which action?
Can you go back to the title of the grant?
So we don't have the title in this.
That's the shorted description, I believe.
We can maybe go back to the title.
If we go to the Biden Grants tab, maybe search for Shirley.
All right, maybe we'll come back to that.
But if we look at the lawn description at least, the term DEI or diversity, equity, inclusion, that's not in the description.
The explicit term DEI is not in the description, correct?
Was there something in the description that you thought made it one of the bad grants?
Yeah, let me read it again.
Yes, please.
So I think the line about black stories, gay stories, true stories related to preferencing the executive order that we continue to reference.
And so we flagged it as a grant for potential termination because of that line.
That doesn't say anything about preferencing, right?
Black stories and gay stories.
Yeah, it just says stories about black and gay.
DEI Rationale Column Review00:15:40
That's true.
It doesn't explicitly say anything about preferencing.
That's right.
And there's nothing like crazy about a story about a black person, right?
I agree.
No.
All right.
We can take this down.
If everyone's okay, maybe we'll do another 15, 20 minutes and then break for lunch.
Great.
Break now?
No, no, I'm good.
I'm showing you a document I'll mark as plaintiff's exhibit.
I think this would be 11.
This is labeled AR5.
It's a March 13th email from Adam Wolfson to you and Mr. Fox, copying Mr. McDonald, 3.16 p.m.
And he says, hi, Nate, hi, Justin.
Great meeting you yesterday and catching up today.
So just to confirm again, the first time you met in person was March 12th, correct?
Yes.
That's the meeting we talked about before?
Yes.
And then he says, and catching up today.
So you met on March 13th as well?
I believe so.
It may have been a phone call.
I don't recall.
Okay.
Do you remember that meeting?
Not explicitly, no.
Mr. Wolfson says, as discussed, I've copied below the link for the award spreadsheet created by Brett that the program directors used for their historical review of NEHS grants since January 2021.
And I think we have AR6, which is that spreadsheet which we'll put on and mark as plaintiffs 11.
Wait, we already have that one.
Sorry, that'll be 12.
So this is the spreadsheet linked to the email, correct?
Right.
I don't know.
I assume so.
And in the email, Mr. Wolfson says, Mike and I will appreciate having your thoughts and suggestions.
So did you review this spreadsheet?
Yes.
What did you do?
We read the program name, the recipient, the description, and the award value to the extent that it existed.
and what did you do with that information?
We looked at their...
I have not seen all the columns on this file.
I don't know.
Can you zoom out a little bit or go across the spreadsheet?
Okay, what did we do with it?
We read it.
For what?
For what reason?
To determine whether we agreed or disagreed with their, or I guess more specifically with Brett Bobley's review of the grants that were identified here for being in violation of the executive orders or referencing DEI or gender ideology or environmental justice.
So this was a spreadsheet compiling information that NEH staff had put together.
Is that right?
Yes.
And you were reviewing it to see whether you agreed or disagreed with their designations?
Yes.
Okay.
Did you talk to Mr. McDonald or Mr. Wolfson about this?
Yes.
When?
I don't recall the exact date.
It would have been in a subsequent meeting after the 13th of March.
What was said at that meeting?
I don't recall exactly.
What did you convey to them about your thoughts and suggestions about the spreadsheet?
So Justin and I compiled a list that you had just seen in the previous file.
And we basically reconciled their review of their own grants versus our review of their grants and then worked together to try and come up with a final list of grants that were either in violation because of DEI or because they were wasteful in Mike's view.
The list that we were just looking at, you compiled that before reviewing this list, right?
That's right.
And you sent it to Mr. McDonald, Mr. Wolfson before Mr. Wolfson sent you this list, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So you then took this spreadsheet, reviewed it, and compared it to the list that you had done before seeing this?
Yes, but the grants at NEH are exhaustive and we had the entire list before coming up with our own list.
Okay.
But you didn't have the staff comments, right?
That's right.
Okay.
All right.
I think this is probably a logical place to break for lunch so we can go off the record.
The time is 11.58 and we're now going off the record.
The time is 12.51.
And we're now back on the record.
Good afternoon, Mr. Kavanaugh.
I'm handing you what's been marked as planned two to the 13.
This is an email that It is bates labeled US 37960.
It's an email from Michael McDonald to you and Justin Fox dated March 13th, 2025 at 3.44 p.m.
Direct your attention to the second paragraph.
It says, this is a follow-up to confirm that you both now have login accounts into the NEH system, which will allow you to review our current and past grant awards.
And I'm going to skip the next several paragraphs until the paragraph says, also, Nate, thank you for sending Adam and me the list of grants that were awarded during President Biden's administration, January 20th, 2021 through January 19th, 2025, at NEH.
No rush, but whenever we can all find a time to meet, Adam and I did have some questions both about the list and about the summary conclusions you drew from it.
So have you already expressed some summary conclusions to Mr. McDonald about that list of Biden administration grants?
Not outside of the list we already reviewed.
No.
But as the list that you already reviewed, you expressed some summary conclusions to Mr. McDonald about it.
The list that we reviewed on the screen before break.
Right.
That's what we sent to Mike and Adam.
So I think I understand.
The conclusions that you drew, the summary conclusions, were reflected in the spreadsheet.
Is that what you're saying?
Yes.
And you didn't talk to him otherwise about those conclusions?
No.
Okay.
Okay.
Handing you plaintiff's exhibit 14.
This is a document fake-stamped US 50669.
This is an email chain between you, Justin Fox, and Ethan Shoutran titled NEH Review.
correct?
Correct.
dated March the 17th, 1047 AM.
At the bottom of the page, there's an earlier email, just a few rows down.
Sunday, March 16th, 2025 at 7.28 p.m. from Justin Fox, where Justin Fox says, Nate, see attached PDF in Excels to share with Mike slash Adam tonight for them to review.
Correct?
For them to review tomorrow.
For them to review tomorrow a.m.
And then you respond on March 17th at the top saying, nice job, this looks great.
We just need to follow up with them today to make sure they are aligned on executing the plan quickly.
That's what it says, right?
Right.
So what's the plan referring to here?
The plan is canceling the grants that were flagged in the review files that Justin is referencing in his previous email.
Okay.
And these were the grants that you had identified before you reviewed the list from NEH?
These are the list.
No, this is, can you repeat the question, sorry?
These were grants that you had identified before reviewing the list of grants that NEH had supplied that NEH staff had identified as potentially being related to diversity equity inclusion.
The final list that we ended up recommending to Mike and Adam were a combination of both our original list and their employee reviewed list, and we created a synthesis of both of those to make a recommendation to Mike.
Okay, and this is what you were conveying in, or this is what Mr. Fox was sending you in this March 16th email?
Yes.
Okay.
Why was there a need to execute the plan quickly?
The general pacing of Doge was to try and make decisions and act quickly to avoid government employees dragging their feet on cancellations.
Aside from that general goal, did you receive any specific instruction to execute this plan quickly?
No.
up.
Marking plaintiffs, Exhibit 15.
Handing it to the witness.
This is a document based stamped US-839.
This is an email from Justin Fox to Mr. McDonald, Mr. Wolfson, and you're copying.
And it says, Michael Adam, hope you both had a good weekend.
See attached to our review of NEH grants, census, and contracts.
And then he has the same bullets from the prior email.
And under grants, it says, we reviewed all active grants for DEI involvement and marked them accordingly.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
And I know we've talked about it somewhat already, but what is DEI referring to here?
It stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And what is your opinion of diversity, equity, inclusion?
My personal opinion?
Well, let's start with what does it mean to you?
It means diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Well, that's the label, but what do those words mean?
It means making decisions on a basis of something other than merit.
Okay.
How does diversity differ from equity in that term, you know?
I don't know.
I don't understand the label itself, frankly.
Okay.
So to you, that's all it means is any time a decision is made, based on something other than merit, it is diversity, equity, inclusion.
Objection.
I don't know if I would make that broad of a characterization, but directionally, yes.
How would you characterize it?
How I just characterize it to you.
And what is your personal opinion about diversity, equity, inclusion?
In what context?
In this context, in the context of federal grants having DEI involvement.
Can you repeat the question again?
My personal opinion on DEI with respect to NEH's grants?
Yes.
My opinion is that they are violating the executive order that the President of the United States signed.
And in the context of a $2 trillion federal deficit, I think that they're wasteful and unnecessary.
So aside from the legal conclusion that they violate the executive order, and aside for what you said about wasteful spending in light of the deficit, do you have any other opinion about DEI grants?
Exactly.
No.
Let's put on the screen US 847, which will be exhibit number 16.
Yes.
It's a spreadsheet, but it's in PDF form.
And I'll represent to you that this is the spreadsheet.
This is one of the spreadsheets attached to this March 17th email.
Does this look familiar to you?
It looks like a file Justin was prepared.
So Justin prepared this?
Yes.
And then going back to the email that's in front of you.
Sorry.
Yep.
It says page one is a summarized view of the grant details on page two to eighty nine.
That's what it says in the email.
And then the email says grants are shown on pages two to eighty nine in descending order dollar amount by dollar amount by division.
Page two through eighty-nine shows details for active grants which were flagged as having DEI involvement only.
Grant Termination Procedures00:02:02
It does not show details for active grants without DEI involvement or grants which are expired.
And then it says, please review the active grants flagged for DEI involvement and mark your decision in the column title MMAW in the Excel.
So if we could look at this is page two of the PDF.
There's a column that says DEI rationale.
Do you see that?
I do, yes.
Can you zoom in a little bit, please?
Zoom in?
Yes.
Yep.
So I'll just read that first row.
It says, NABS's project aims to create a national digital platform for boarding school archival collections promoting collective efforts, engagement, and sustained involvement.
That's what it says, right?
That's right.
Did you and Mr. Fox come up with this rationale?
I believe Justin did.
Can you go to the full description of the grant as well to the right?
Can you read?
Yeah, give me a second.
So you said that you believe Mr. Fox came up with the DEI rationale?
That's right.
Do you know how he did that?
It would have been by reading the grant description and using that as the primary basis.
How do you know that?
Because that was well understood of how we reviewed grants at Doge for DEI, is by reading them.
That's something you talked to him about?
Yes.
And he told you that that's how he did it?
Mr. Wolson Meeting Views00:08:02
He didn't explicitly tell me that that's how he did it, but it was well understood that you were required to read the actual grant description before requesting that it be terminated.
That's something that you required him to do?
It was just well understood among the Doge team and culture that if you're going to request that something be terminated or cut, that you had to thoroughly understand what it entailed before requesting that the agency had terminates it.
Did Mr. Fox use artificial intelligence to come up with the DEI rationale?
No.
No.
Let's look at another document.
This will be plaintiff 16.
I think we can take this down.
Wasn't that 16?
I'm sorry.
This will be plaintiff 17.
So this is labeled US-753.
This is another email chain.
And you see at the top, this is email from Mr. McDonald to Mr. Wolson dated March 19th, 2025, correct?
Correct.
And if you go down into the bottom of the chain, the last email in the chain, or the first in time, is that March 16th, 2025 email from Dustin Fox that we were talking about earlier?
Yes.
Do you see in the chain that on this is on the second page?
Mr. Fox says, let us know when works best for a meeting tomorrow or Thursday to walk through this.
Appreciate it's a lot of information.
just let us know.
Is that a question?
Yeah, you see where it says that?
Yes.
And then if you look at the later email, which is on the first page, it looks like you then went ahead and did meet on Wednesday, March 19th at NEH.
Does that appear to be correct?
It appears to be correct, yeah.
Okay.
Do you recall that meeting?
I don't, to be honest.
From this email chain, it looks like it would have been a meeting between the four of you, yourself, Mr. Fox, Mr. McDonald, and Mr. Wolson?
Yes.
You don't recall anyone else at that meeting?
I know you said you didn't recall specifically, but.
Occasionally Mike would have brought in his, I believe it was the director of HR or the interim acting general counsel, but I don't recall if she was in this meeting or not.
What was her name?
I don't remember.
Okay.
So this was a meeting that you had shortly after Mr. Fox sent over spreadsheet.
Does that refresh your recollection as to what was discussed at this meeting?
I think it was a meeting in person to understand what Mike and Adam's view were of the grant recommendation that we had proposed for termination.
Okay.
Do you recall what they said?
They, I believe, were directionally in line with our recommendations, but had flagged that certain grants we flagged for termination were not only related to DEI, but they were also just generally, in our view, wasteful grants.
And so they were trying to understand why we had recommended grants outside of just DEI for termination, to which our response was our mandate outside of just DEI is to help find wasteful spending within each agency, and these are additional ones we feel are wasteful.
Do you remember specifically what Mr. McDonald and Mr. Wolson said?
I don't specifically remember now.
And what you were saying just now about the difference between grants that might implicate DEI and grants that might not but were otherwise wasteful.
Was that something that Mr. McDonald said to your recollection or Mr. Wolfson or?
I believe it was both of them.
Okay.
And how did you respond when they said this?
When they said what?
That they had seen the list and seen grants that were discussing DEI, but wanted to understand why there were other grants that didn't implicate a DEI on the list.
What did you say?
We said what I just told you, which was that in addition to helping them stay compliant with the executive orders, there's another mandate separate from that, which is we're working with each agency head to identify potential wasteful spending, which included grants, contracts, and personnel.
And so extending beyond the initial scope, which was DEI, we then went a step further to propose an incremental set of grants that were also in our view wasteful.
You said incremental.
Do you have a sense of the scope offhand?
I don't.
Do you have a sense if it was the majority of grants or?
I really don't.
It could have been 50-50, but I don't know.
And what did Mr. McDonald and Mr. Wolfson say when you explained that?
Broadly, they were in line with the idea of, for lack of a better phrase, wiping the slate clean with NEH's grants.
Outside of the America 250 initiative and the Garden of Heroes Initiative, which was a priority of the White House, they were open to effectively open to the idea of cutting grants beyond just ones related to DEI.
And you said, I think you used a phrase, wiping the slate clean.
Was that something that you said or something that they said?
I think that's something Mike said in the context of, yeah, it was something Mike said.
You said that they were broadly aligned.
Was there a sense in which they weren't fully aligned with the set of grants you had proposed?
Sorry, repeat the question, please.
You believe that McDonald and Wolfson were broadly aligned with your proposal.
Was there a sense in which they were fully aligned, at least initially?
I think the initial impression was that we were cutting a fairly large percentage of the outstanding grants during the Biden administration.
Some included DEI, some didn't.
And I think they were initially not surprised, but let's say surprised by the amount of grants we recommended for termination.
And there was a little bit of a back and forth in terms of what the final list ended up being, but they ultimately were amenable to that idea.
Do you have a sense of the percentage of grants that you were proposing for termination at this time from the Biden administration was upwards of 70, 80, 90 percent?
I'm sure we have the data, so I don't know.
You can do the math or we can do it together.
Okay.
Do you recall if there was a plan for next steps after this meeting at NEA?
The plan was basically we left a list of recommended grants, contracts, and...
You what a list of recommended contracts?
The plan was we basically...
We provided them with a list of grants, contracts, and personnel that we recommended they review for termination.
Consolidated List of Grants00:14:57
The ball was then in their court to review those lists, agree as a leadership team, and then come back to us with the next set of actions, which would have been to effectively execute the terminations.
Let's go to the next document.
So the plaintiffs 18 document-based stamp US 826.
This is an email chain.
Mr. McDonald, yourself, Mr. Fox, Mr. Wolfson, the first email on the chain, at the top, it's dated March 27th, 9.46 p.m.
Let's turn to the last email on the chain.
Well, first in time, last in the pages.
This is a March 19th email from Justin Fox, 6.07 p.m.
So this, if I'm getting the chronology correct, this would have been the evening after your meeting at NEH earlier that day.
And Fox says, Mike Adam, see attached updated spreadsheets and their descriptions below.
Do you know why Mr. Fox updated the spreadsheets after the meeting?
Probably because Adam and Mike had a little bit of a back and forth with us on what the final list of terminated grants would be, which was common in our work with the agencies that we worked with.
Do you recall what that back and forth was?
Not explicitly.
I think they had views on specific grants, but I don't recall the exact ones.
Later in the email, the last line, Fox says, let us know how the meeting goes with the board tomorrow.
Feel free to call with questions.
What is board referring to here?
I believe it was the NEH council that Mike was responsible for leading as the new acting chair, which comprised of several members.
I don't know exactly who they were.
Do you know what that meeting was going to be about?
I think it was a standard, basically, board meeting.
I don't know what the agenda was of the meeting.
Did you talk about that board meeting at your March 19th meeting with McDonald and Wolfson?
He let us know that he had an upcoming board meeting, but was not clear on the exact contents of the meeting, so I don't know.
Did he say that he was going to talk to them about your proposal to cut a number of grants?
He was going to talk, he told us that he was going to talk to the board about cutting grants with respect to ones that related to the executive orders.
Going back to the first page of this chain on March 27th, Justin Fox sends an email and says, Mike, do you have the consolidated list of grants you've approved for termination?
Let us know so we can be prepped for tomorrow.
And then McDonald says in response, and this is the top email, Adam and I were only able to complete our review this afternoon, and we won't have the list ready until tomorrow morning.
We may be able to provide it with it before you arrive at 10.
If we can, we will.
Thanks.
Do you recall that back and forth?
I mean, I'm copied.
I'm sure I saw the email, yeah.
Okay.
you have that Thacker declaration still, I have to find mine actually.
Yeah, you have it.
If you go to paragraph 13.
Yep.
Sierra McDonald says, on March 17th to 18th, I worked with NEH Assistant Chairman for Programs Adam Wolfson to conduct a further individualized review of the spreadsheets of open grants created by program staff.
So is that something that you and Fox told McDonald and Wolfson to do on March 17th and 18th?
I don't recall explicitly telling them to review those.
They were reviewing the grants that we had recommended for termination.
And what did you tell him when you asked him to take a look at those grants?
I think this was Justin telling him because he was running point on NEH for our team.
But it was something to the effect of review our recommendations and let us know which you disagree with.
And I know we talked about it some, but can you just say again what the goal was or the guiding principle or the criteria that you were asking them to apply?
There were two guiding principles.
One was through the lens of the executive orders that were signed with respect to DEI, preference, et cetera, the ones on the pages we've now referenced.
The other was a list that we came up with, which at our discretion fell in the category of wasteful spending in the context of the broader deficit and ones we felt did not align with America 250 initiative and the Garden of Heroes initiative.
And here's the master list.
Review it and let us know if there are any that you'd like to keep.
Did you provide any further gloss or instruction on what was meant by wasteful spending?
No.
What would you have expected them to do to determine whether something was wasteful?
The two priorities that we know were to be kept were anything around grants related to the founding of the country related to this America 250 initiative in 2026 and this Garden of Heroes museum that the White House was interested in building with NEH funds.
So those were the cornerstones of what we knew to keep.
Otherwise, everything was up to be evaluated for potential termination.
We didn't recommend that, but that was the lens by which we were evaluating things through.
Because those ideas, America 250th, Garden of Heroes, those are things aligned with the administration in your view?
Yes.
And anything else would fall into the category of wasteful?
Not explicitly, but potentially and subject to be reviewed.
Okay.
What would be a reason why something would be saved if it didn't align with those to the appointments?
Can we pull up the list of grants that were kept versus cut and we can go through each one?
I don't know if that's a great use of time, but we can, but does anyone come to mind right now sitting here?
No, there were 1,200 grants roughly.
Do you remember roughly how many were saved?
I don't.
Okay.
A large percentage of outstanding grants were cut.
Okay.
We might come back to that later, but I'll just leave it there for now.
Okay.
Back to the Thacker Declaration, which I think you have in front of you.
Paragraph 14.
He says, on March 19th, 2025, NEH CIO Bobley sent NEH Assistant Chair for Planning and Operations, Pranita, P-R-A-N-I-T-A, Raghavan, R-A-G-H-A-V-A-N, a final spreadsheet containing only those projects that I and Mr. Wolfson deemed to conflict with President Trump's executive orders.
And then the following paragraph says, on March 20th, 2025, Mr. Ragamon, R-A-G-H-A-V-A-N, transmitted this list to the Office of Management and Budget as directed by the presidential executive orders.
Do you know what, if anything, OMB did with this list?
I don't know what they did with the list.
Did you discuss this list with anyone at OMB?
No.
Did you discuss the grant terminations at all with anyone at OMB?
No.
Did OMB have any role in this evaluation of grants?
Now, next paragraph.
On March 26, 2025, Mr. Wolfson and I reviewed additional spreadsheets of grants that included those the program directors had initially listed as having no connection to the president's executive orders.
So was this in response to that email chain we were just reviewing with you and Mr. Fox where you're exchanging spreadsheets and he's sending an updated spreadsheet?
I assume so, yes, but I want to find the exact email.
Yeah, I assume so.
It's all around the same time period, right?
Yes.
Okay.
So you and Mr. Fox, or it sounds like Mr. Fox maybe, flagged grants that program directors had initially listed as having no connection to the president's executive orders.
You flagged those for further review.
Yes.
Marking plaintiffs, 19.
This is labeled AR-10, if you could turn to the second page of this email chain.
And I'm directing your attention to a March 28th email from Fox to McDonald and Wolfson copying you.
This is March 28th, and Justin Fox says, Mike Adam, thanks for the productive time today.
So I take it there was a meeting on March 28th.
I believe so.
I may not have been present in that meeting.
This was just a few days before the ultimate terminations were sent out in April 2nd.
Yeah, I believe Justin attended that meeting by himself.
Do you know why you didn't attend?
I was busy with other agencies.
Did you talk with Justin before the meeting?
I don't believe explicitly, but I knew the status of the project with NEH, which was we were in the middle of determining what the final list of grant terminations would be.
And what was the purpose of the meeting?
to align with Mike and Adam on the final list.
So you weren't at the meeting, but do you know what was discussed at the meeting?
What happened at the meeting?
I don't know the specifics of the meeting.
I wasn't there.
Did Fox give you a readout afterwards?
I don't believe so.
No.
In this email, he says, he attached active grants for your review for DEI or wasteful spend, approximately 440 grants.
Flagging, these are the ones NEH staff marked as NA for DEI.
So again, these were grants that NEH staff had identified as not promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, in their view.
Correct.
Correct.
Do you know why Fox was sending this spreadsheet to McDonald on March 28th?
Why he was sending it?
He was sending it because he wanted Mike to, he wanted to get Mike and Adam's opinion on grants that we viewed as wasteful but didn't fall in the DEI category for potential termination.
And he says, let us know on these.
I'll circle back on the total proposed cut based on the list Brett gave me.
Brett's Brett Bobbly there.
Take it.
Yes.
He says, for your benefit, I've also attached the proposed RIFT plan.
And then he says, could you put us in touch with someone who could help us gain admin access to Microsoft?
Why did you and Fox want access to Microsoft?
Part of our operating procedure with Doge was to get system administrator access.
We called it sysadmin, which allowed us to operate as if we were an administrator within the agency for provisioning email accounts, access to critical systems, et cetera.
Was this operating procedure set forth in any document?
No.
How did you know it was operating procedure?
It was discussed openly during all hands meetings.
By whom?
Multiple members of the Doge team.
Was it discussed by Mr. Davis as something you should do?
Yes.
And you did it at other agencies?
Yes, to the maximum extent that we could.
Which other agencies, do you recall?
I mean, the vast majority of agencies in which we were onboarded.
So then in the next email, McDonald says, my understanding from our Friday meeting was that the idea was to check on whether employees were logging into their email accounts on a regular basis.
Pressure Tactics for Action00:11:12
But if I misunderstood what you needed, please let me know.
So it sounds like McDonald did misunderstand the purpose of logging in, right?
I don't think he misunderstood, I guess.
I don't know.
Well, you said that the reason you were asked for control, could you say it again, why you were asking for control of the Microsoft account?
Yeah, it was mostly in the context of conducting RIF plans.
We needed to see which employees were actually logging into their accounts for usage, which employees were engaged, which weren't.
And it was also important if we needed to make changes to anything within the agency with respect to user accounts that we could do so without having to rely on a CIO figure like Brett.
Was it also for purposes of donating grants and contracts potentially?
No.
So it's unrelated to that.
Yes.
Okay, it was more focused on RIFs.
Yes.
Okay.
In NEH's case, they had a completely separate system for provisioning grants.
What was that system called?
I don't remember.
Brad Boadley was the administrator of it.
Okay, then if you look on the first page,
on March 31st at 11.35, Fox sends an email to McDonald saying, Mike...
could you pass along your cell number?
Sorry, don't have it saved.
I need to catch up with you on something time-sensitive.
You see that?
I do.
Yes.
Do you know what he's referring to there?
Oh, I don't.
No idea.
No, no idea.
I assume it was related to the status of the cancellations that were being discussed.
A couple hours later, 12.29 p.m. Fox says, Mike, please call me as soon as you can.
Do you know what that's referring to?
the same topic.
But you said you don't know, but you assume it.
I assume that that's the case.
He was trying to get a status update from Mike and Adam on their review of our proposed cuts across people, contracts, and grants.
But why would he have needed a status update on a time-sensitive basis on March 31st?
Because our general operating procedure at Doge was to try and get this work done quickly, and this had now been dragging out for two or three weeks with NEH, and so we were trying to push Mike along to move faster with agreeing on a plan.
Is that something that you and Fox discussed?
It wasn't explicitly discussed, but it was implicitly discussed that we wanted to try and get the agency heads to act quickly on their proposed plans.
Did you but at NEH specifically with McDonald, did you discuss with Fox, okay, we need to like apply pressure now because it's been two to three weeks?
That was like not explicitly discussed, but that was the implication of the culture of Doge was to try and get these folks to move fast.
Yeah.
So we were comfortable applying pressure to the extent that we needed to.
Understood, but I'm just trying to understand why on March 31st, all of a sudden Fox is saying, I need to talk about something time-sensitive.
It seems to suggest there was something specific.
There wasn't something specific.
It was just.
Please.
Go ahead.
There wasn't something specific other than us applying pressure to get Mike to act on this plan.
And is that something you and Fox discussed before he sent the email?
I don't believe Justin and I discussed it.
So your best understanding is that Fox just all of a sudden at 1135 on March 31st thought, I'm going to call Mike.
I'm going to email Mike and say I need to talk to you on something time sensitive, but it was just to apply pressure to make him move more quickly.
Yes.
And what's that understanding based on?
The broad operating procedures of Doge, of which I've done the same thing in other agencies.
Could you provide an example?
Not off the top of my head, no.
And then an hour later, at 12.29, when he says, please call me as soon as you can, you don't know why he sent that an hour later?
No, I don't.
You think it was just the same, that he was just trying to get McDonald's to move quickly?
I mean, this is just less than an hour later.
Right.
But our initial meeting with Mike was on Wednesday, March 12th.
So 19 days later, in the context of Doge, would have been almost three weeks of trying to align on a list of grants to terminate that effectively had not changed materially over the course of the beginning to the end.
And so we were trying to push Mike to move faster on the plan because it had been almost three weeks.
So nothing happened, though, from March 30th to March 31st from 11.35 to 12.29 p.m.
Nothing happened besides the passage of time is what you're saying to lead to this email.
Actually.
Yes. All right.
So then Fox emails again at 12.52 p.m.
This is less than half an hour from the prior email.
I'll just read it.
Mike, call me when you get the chance.
We need a game plan for effectuing rifts, final grant terminations, and contract cancellations by tomorrow AN.
We will carry these plans out before the end of the week.
We're getting pressure from the top on this and would prefer that you remain on our side, but let us know if you're no longer interested.
So who from the top was pressuring you on this?
Nobody explicitly.
Again, Mike's perception of where Doge sat within the federal government was we had a direct line of communication with the White House.
And so we were there to help enforce the executive orders that were signed.
So as a pressure tactic, we would tell Mike that we were getting pressure from basically the White House to effectuate these contract and grant terminations that are aligned with the EO.
So it was a time pressure tactic.
There was no person explicitly putting pressure on Justin to send this email.
What about implicitly?
No.
So it's just untrue?
I don't think it's untrue.
Was someone applying pressure from the top to terminate grants quickly?
Now, the top pressure in the backdrop of our work at NEH was there were EOs signed relating to terminating grants related to DEI initially.
So we could use that as a backstop to apply pressure to Mike to move quickly on a contract and grant cutting plan.
Was anyone at the White House involved in grant terminations at NEH?
No.
Never communicate with anyone from the White House about that?
About grant terminations?
Yeah.
No.
And when I say the White House, I mean White House and all its components, executive officers, president, OMB.
I believe we, Justin Iminetti, who was a Doge lawyer, who I believe was onboarded by EEO, the executive officer, the president, he would have been involved in the course of our work, just basically making sure that it was that the work we were doing was approved.
Did you discuss this specific email with Mr. Fox where he says we're getting pressure from the top?
No, I did not.
Didn't message with him about it on signal that he was going to do it.
No, we would have been working in the office together at GSA and verbally saying we need to get Mike to move quickly on this plan.
Okay.
And your strategy for doing that was just like making up this sense of pressure, emailing every hour or so until he responded.
As you can see from the emails, this has not happened previously in the three weeks we've been working with NEH.
So it wasn't used frequently, but when it had been going on for three weeks and we had not heard an update from Mike, we were applying more pressure to get him to act on the plan.
Yeah.
You say, you know, let us know, or Fox says, excuse me, Fox says, let us know if you're no longer interested.
Did you have some sense that McDonald wasn't interested in the terminations anymore?
I don't believe so, but the nature of their communications with us had slowed down relative to prior weeks, and so we wanted to make sure that he was still on board with carrying out this termination plan across not just grants, but also the rifts and contracts.
You say we'd, yeah, I'm sorry.
Fox says we'd prefer that you remain on our side.
Do you know what you meant by that, by on our side?
I think just aligned with the White House's agenda and following the EOS.
Our side is, I don't think he was referring to an actual side per se, but it was the broad concept of are you going to comply with the executive orders or not.
The next exhibit, plaintiff's 20.
Okay, we might come back to some of these, but I'm just going to skip ahead a little bit.
Master Excel File Accuracy00:06:02
This is labeled AR-15.
Okay, so I want to direct your attention first to this March 31st, 11.52 p.m. email from Mr. Fox.
We're emailing Beth Stewart and Brett Bobby.
He says, hope you've been doing well.
Could you please send us an EGMS poll containing the below columns tomorrow on active grants?
Appreciate the help.
Let us know where you have any questions, and then he lists the specific columns that he's looking for.
You're copied on this email.
Why were you and Mr. Fox requesting this information late at night on March 31st?
Well, we worked late at night the entire time of Doge, so that's not atypical.
But we were asking for a pool of their data from EGMS, which is their grant system, and we're cross-referencing that data with what we were getting from USA spending to ensure there were no discrepancies in what we saw versus what they had as their source of truth.
Okay.
It was an extra step of accuracy.
Okay.
That's it?
Yes.
Because you had exchanged a number of spreadsheets previously.
We've talked about some of them.
Spreadsheets that NEH staff had put together, spreadsheets that you and Mr. Fox have put together.
And the reason why you were asking for this information now was to confirm the validity of that information with the USA spending, or sorry, with the NEH information.
You also asked Justin.
I believe that's what he was getting out here.
It's just to do a final cross-reference on the accuracy of, and frankly to make sure we had a complete list of all grants because we were getting close to executing these terminations.
Okay, did you have a sense at this point when you had hoped to execute the terminations?
We didn't have a specific date in mind, but the general goal was push for as soon as possible.
Had you discussed that with Mr. McDonald and Mr. Wolfson?
It was very clear that we were trying to execute it.
Did you receive that information from Ms. Stewart, Beth Stewart?
Based on her email, I assume so, but I wasn't copied on her response.
So I don't know.
Do you know what Fox did with it or what you and Fox did with it?
I'm sure Justin, I don't know.
My guess is that Justin took that list and compared it against the list that we had been speaking about to make sure that there were no missing grants in EGMS that were not from USA spending.
I mean, you'll notice in Beth's email it says there are often small, or common to have small differences between EGMS and the USA spending records.
So again.
Sure.
The email says it is common to have small differences between EGMS and those records found in USA spending.
So he was cross-referencing the list to ensure just thoroughness in our work before we had a final list of grants for termination.
And to generate that final list of grants for termination, did you use this list that Beth had sent you or some other list?
You'll have to ask Justin, but my sense is that we had a master Excel file which concluded which included both the data from USA spending and the data from EGMS.
There was likely, you'll have to ask Justin, a very small discrepancy in what was in those two systems.
And to the extent that we were missing one, we evaluated those through the same criteria and then put it into a master file for them to sign off on their termination.
So Mr. Fox generated the final list?
I'll mark a document as P21.
This is labeled AR21.
This is an email chain.
It starts off April 1st, 8.06 p.m. for McDonald to Fox.
send your copy, direct your attention to the first-in-time email in the chain sent from McDonald's to Fox at 10.07 a.m.
Rejected Recommendation Justification00:03:50
I'm going to read a good portion of this just as a background for questions, so don't indulge me.
Start with the second paragraph.
As you know, after our staff reviewed all the awards made over the past four years and rated them high, medium, or low in terms of promoting DEI, Adam and I carefully reviewed the staff's work over two full days and sent you that first spreadsheet, which we feel very confident about.
It's also the list that we sent to OMB.
The attached list concerns, as you know, applications that staff rated NA.
That is, involving products that seem to have no applicability to promoting DEI.
We feel much less confident about it.
This is because many of the DEI rationale comments relating to products on the attached spreadsheet say things such as does not relate directly to DEI topics, or more emphatically, there is no direct connection to DEI.
We think these products are harmless when it comes to promoting DEI.
But in the issue of time, because we know you want to move quickly, I assume he meant, we didn't give these applications the individualized consideration that we did to those in the first spreadsheet.
Accordingly, we only explicitly initialed a few important projects such as the papers of George Washington, whose cancellation would not reflect well on any of us.
And the same could be said for many other listed projects.
It would take too long at this point to review the NA list appropriately.
Therefore, our recommendation is that wherever the DEI rationale on the spreadsheet makes clear that there is no DEI component to the project, there is no justification for canceling the product's funding and you should allow it to continue.
Who decided to reject that recommendation from Mr. McDonald?
Who decided to reject what recommendation?
The recommendation to save projects listed as NA, for which he says there is no justification for canceling the product's funding.
I don't understand the question.
So Mr. McDonald's here is saying in this email that there are projects that NEH staff have flagged as NA, meaning not applicable for DEI.
And he says, our recommendation is that wherever the DEI rationale on the spreadsheet makes clear that there is no DEI component, there is no justification for canceling the product's funding and you should allow it to continue.
That's their recommendation.
Who rejected that recommendation?
Justin and I both rejected that recommendation.
Because if you read his last paragraph, that's why.
Yeah, let's look at that last paragraph.
So he says, this is the last sentence.
Either way, as you've made clear, it's your decision on whether to continue funding any of the projects in this list.
I meant the sentence before that.
Okay, but I want to ask you just about that, the second sentence.
So he says, as you've made clear, so do you know what conversations he's referring to here?
There is no specific conversation that I'm aware of where we said it's our decision to determine which projects should be kept or not.
Okay, but you made it clear over the course of conversations.
That was never explicitly stated or implicitly stated.
Our understanding as Doge was we had no authority to cancel projects or grants, rifts, etc.
It was solely up to the head of the agency based on our recommendations.
Agency Head Sign Off Plan00:15:20
Then at 3.50 p.m., this is AR22, the prior page, Fox responds, he copies you.
You aren't included on the first email.
Do you know why he copied you?
For visibility.
For what?
Visibility, just so I was aware of the communications.
And Fox says, as discussed, we've collected the grants you flagged to keep, and a few of those pertaining to America 250th were within priorities of the administration.
So he says, as discussed.
So was there a discussion with McDonald and Wolfson between these two emails that you recall?
I don't recall.
If there was a conversation, I wasn't a party to it.
At this point, Justin was almost primarily running point on the remaining turns of grants for cancellation.
So we have to ask Mr. Fox if he calls that conversation.
Yes.
This might be a good time for a break, 10-minute break.
The time is 1.48.
All right, I'm off the record.
The time is 2-0-2, and we're now back on the record.
It's a little wind.
Feels good.
I'm marking points exhibited at 22.
This is a document labeled U.S. 9562.
The first in time email in the chain is an email from Justin Fox to Michael McDonald and Adam Wolfson, dated April 2, 2025, at 1223 a.m.
So just after midnight, you're copied.
And Fox says, Mike Adam will plan to meet at the office at 2 p.m. if that works for you.
Please be prepared with your view on the core capable and mission line folks needed to execute on your renewed direction prioritizing America first grants.
Given where canceling many of the small wasteful grants are since is this will be a tight group which we can walk through.
Do you recall receiving this email?
No.
Do you recall a meeting on April 2nd along the lines that Mr. Fox?
I don't believe I was present in that meeting.
Do you recall talking with Mr. Fox about this meeting?
I don't, actually.
You don't recall if you and Fox had talked about this previously?
Again, I had other many other agencies at this point in my time at Doge.
Justin was running point at this point at this time, and I knew where NEH stood, which was we were very close to executing on the final plan of grants, contracts, and personnel, but I wasn't present at this point.
It was close enough in terms of the final version that I didn't need to be as actively involved at this point.
He references a renewed direction prioritizing America First grants.
Is that something that you had discussed previously?
Yes, in the same context as keeping the America 250-related grants in the Garden of Heroes.
It was in that same vein of grants that we were going to keep.
What does America First grants mean?
If you show me some examples of grants that we kept, I can identify what they would be.
I think one of the prior emails talked about like a papers of George Washington.
Would that be an example of an America First?
Why?
Because the papers of George Washington are a foundational document of the country.
So we felt that that was important to keep, not cut, compared to something like we can go through some of the other grants that we decided to terminate.
Yeah, we can look at examples, but do you, what's your understanding generally of what America First means?
In this context, I really don't, I'm not sure I have a great answer for you.
I don't know why Justin phrased it this way.
Do you have any understanding of the term America First?
In a foreign policy context, yes, not related to NEH.
What's it mean in the foreign policy context?
It means prioritizing the well-being of our country before other countries.
And is that a term that you used in discussions with McDonald and Wolfson at any point?
No.
But this was a separate category, a different category from the America 250 and Garden of Heroes grants, right?
I actually don't believe so.
I think Justin, frankly, was using it as a synonym or basically a synonym for those other two categories of grants and phrase it this way for some reason.
I don't know.
This wasn't a common term we used among Doge.
Why do you think that?
He may have just been typing quickly.
I honestly don't know.
But why do you think that it was the same as those other two categories as opposed to?
Because I knew what the priorities were with respect to which grants at NEH we should keep.
And reading his language here, I'm guessing that he was referencing those other two categories.
You'll have to ask Justin.
And you said you weren't at this meeting on April 2nd.
You didn't discuss it with Fox beforehand.
You didn't discuss it with him afterwards?
I think I'm sure, again, he would meet with NEH at their office, come back to GSA, and I would casually ask for a status update on where the cancellation plan stood.
And he would provide them to me basically every time there was a meaningful update.
Can we put on the screen US 61429?
Why were they kept?
In our judgment and the judgment of Mike and Adam, these were, I would say, politically neutral, not wasteful grants that we viewed were important enough not to keep.
So it was a judgment call among the four of us, and then ultimately Mike and Adam signed off on it.
But we felt like these were both A, within the administration's priorities, B, fell in line with the quote-unquote America First label that Justin used in his email and didn't relate to DEI.
Any notes or working papers that you have or that you know Mr. Fox has reflecting that judgment?
No.
All right, you can take this down.
Mark plaintiff's 25.
This is AR91.
This is a sample termination notice, right?
Yes.
It was sent on April 2nd at 11.35 p.m.
Yes.
And you can't tell from this document, but I'll represent to you that it was sent from a grant notifications at NEHEmail.onmicrosoft.com account.
Does that sound right?
I actually don't remember the email that was sent, but I'll assume that this is true.
Yeah.
Who sent these termination notices?
I believe it was an employee of NEH, but I actually don't recall.
You didn't send them?
I did not send them personally, no.
It's possible Justin Fox sent them?
Justin, to my knowledge, did not send them.
You think it might have been an NEH employee, but you don't know who?
That's correct.
I don't know exactly who clicked send.
It would have been with the authority of Mike and Adam, obviously, because we were at this stage, but I don't recall the exact person that clicked the send button.
After these termination notices were sent, did you discuss the sending of the emails with Fox or anyone else?
Probably, I don't recall the exact conversation.
Justin probably came to me at some point at GSA saying, just at FYI, NEH team sent out the termination notices today, but that would have been the extent of the conversation.
And you said he probably would have said that.
I mean, you're saying you remember something like that.
I got an update at some point that the NEH grants did end up getting terminated, but I don't recall the exact conversation.
Did you talk with McDonald or Wilson or Fox just before these termination notices went out about the fact that they were going out soon?
I didn't personally.
Justin probably spoke to Mike.
That was the main feedback loop at this stage in the process was Mike and Justin.
And how do you know that Fox didn't send these out?
I don't know, but my sense is that it would have been an NEH employee because Mike and Adam were both intimately involved in this with their IT team.
I could be wrong.
I don't believe it was Justin now.
Would it have been unusual if a Doge employee sent out the termination notices as opposed to someone from the agency?
It wouldn't have been unusual.
In certain cases with other agencies, one of our engineers would help the leadership of the agency facilitate a mass send of the email terminations.
But in this case, I don't believe that's what happened.
And that was at the request of the agency head for efficiency.
Because if you're canceling, for example, 500 grants, it would be inefficient for the agency head to do that manually one by one.
Did you, can you provide an example of that where you did that at another agency?
I believe at the Inter-American Foundation, Inter-American Foundation, Ethan Chao Tran ran a mass send script on behalf of the IAF team just to make it more efficient for them, but it was at their request.
So, in that instance, did he actually press send on the emails for that agency?
I believe so.
Any other examples?
Not to my knowledge.
Generally speaking, someone from the agency would do it, was your understanding?
or we would help them create the mass mail merge that would ultimately get sent out, but they were the ones clicking send.
And was it important to you that someone from the agency click send?
Um...
It was important to us that the head of the agency signed off on the plan that was being effectuated.
That was a requirement.
In terms of procedurally clicking the send button, it wasn't explicitly as important as making sure that the leadership team was just aligned on what the plan was.
You said it was a requirement that the agency team sign off, the agency leadership team sign off.
Is that reflected anywhere in writing?
I don't believe so.
It's not in writing, but it was a broadly understood Doge principle that was discussed during all-hands meetings.
How did you discuss that at these meetings?
Steve Davis, mostly.
Again, the view of our role was we were supposed to be a supporting role to the agency heads.
So we were pushing them to move in a directional, but ultimately it was their decision to sign off on the plans.
So then why was it important to have someone from the agency click send on the termination notices in the ordinary course?
Objection.
Why was or why wasn't it?
Why was it important?
It wasn't as important as what I'm saying.
It was not as important.
Again, we were facilitating emails in the case of IAF to help send 500 grant terminations using an IAF email account.
We were onboarded to the agency as an agency detailee and employee, basically.
And so to the extent that the agency had wanted help in facilitating those mass cancellations, we would offer to do that for them because they weren't engineers or technical.
So in total, do you know how many grants were terminated at NEH approximately?
I don't.
If you show me the data, I can confirm how many there were.
If I represented that, it was around 1,500 or about 1,500.
Does that sound about right?
Sounds right.
All grants that were issued under the Biden administration minus a small set of America First grants that we looked at before.
Is that right?
I don't recall.
I don't recall.
You'd have to look at the.
I'd like to see the data.
Okay.
And then deciding which grants to terminate, you looked at the project description, you said, was one of the things you looked at?
That was one data point among others.
And you considered the point of view that the project was supporting?
It wasn't the point of view that the project was supporting.
The two lenses initially were: one, does it violate an executive order that the White House signed?
The two what?
The two criteria that we used to evaluate whether a grant should be terminated primarily were one, does the grant violate an existing executive order that the White House signed?
In this case, the ones related to DEI, preferential treatment, et cetera.
The other lens was, is this broadly a wasteful program in the context of the administration's priorities, which was a judgment call that we made in conjunction with the agency head.
IMLS Executive Order Status00:03:34
And just to be clear, you didn't terminate the grants because the grantees, in your view, had violated the terms and conditions of the awards.
We didn't.
Right.
That's correct.
You can terminate a grant for convenience in the federal government.
That's your understanding.
Yes.
Based on conversations with individuals at U.S. Doge Service?
Yes.
After the termination of grants on April 2, how much longer did you work on NEH?
At this point, I wasn't spending any significant time on NEH.
Honestly, Justin was ensuring that all the grant recipients received their termination notices, was assisting with the rift plans and contract terminations.
It was like an hour of my time a week at this point.
What were you spending most of your time on?
Other small agencies in the government.
Can you provide some examples?
The Institute of Museum and Library Services, AmeriCorps, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, three.
Was there a sense in which NEH, your work on NEH was paired in connection with work at NEA or the Institute of Library Museum Services?
Were you like working on those at the same time and applying the same methods at those three agencies or no?
The short answer is no.
Another person on our team, Marshall Wood, was the lead for NEA.
We worked on that agency completely separately from NEH.
We didn't have a relationship with the head of NEA at the time.
IMLS, I believe, was listed in an executive order.
And Keith Sonderling was appointed acting chairman of IMLS.
And so we had a close relationship with Keith and said the circumstances of that agency were the same as well.
So the circumstances of that were?
Different from that of NEH.
Each agency had its own unique situation and circumstance.
Was there a proposal at one point to merge NEH and NEA?
Not to my knowledge.
To go back to something briefly, that list we were looking at before of grants that were to be kept, and we went through some examples, just to make sure I understand your testimony.
If a grant related to DEI, it couldn't be on the keep list, right?
That's correct.
After NEH, what did you do in government?
After NEH, I continued my work as the leader of the small agencies team and proceeded to work on the three agencies I mentioned, but there were also others.
I don't have the full list in front of me, but there were about a dozen.
Aside from your work with the small, sorry, from the small agencies team, did you do anything else for Doge?
Immigration and Government Work00:03:48
At the end of my time at Doge, I worked at the Department of Homeland Security on the immigration team with ICE for about a month.
And that was it.
What did you do with ICE?
We were designing a voluntary departure program to encourage illegal immigrants to self-deport from the country.
Anything else besides that time at ICE?
No.
You left around August 2025?
Is that right?
Yes.
Why did you leave?
I was not enjoying the work on immigration and I was ready to go start my next company.
Why were you not enjoying it?
I was not drawn to the immigration program personally.
I didn't agree with all of it.
What didn't you agree with?
I found the small agency's work more fulfilling because I originally joined Doge to help reduce the federal deficit and immigration was not directly related to that, so I wasn't interested in it.
Did you feel like the ICE work was too aggressively getting people deported or not aggressively enough in tax?
I didn't think it was aggressive enough, but at the same time, I didn't enjoy working on that project.
So why did you go there in the first place?
The small agency's work ultimately was winding down in around July because there was growing tension between Elon and the White House, and the desire to cut spending from the White House started to reduce for political reasons, I assume.
And so I got transitioned to immigration after that.
Were you involved, were you privy at all to those tensions between Elon and the White House about tenant spending?
Jackson.
Can you be more specific?
Well, you referenced it vaguely, and it wasn't clear to me whether you had first-hand knowledge of meetings or conversations about that issue, or whether you were just referring to things you read in the press.
I had first-hand knowledge of the tension between Elon and the president.
How so?
I was in a meeting with Elon, Steve Davis, Howard Lutnick, and David Sachs in the West Wing of the White House, where there was a discussion about the growing tension of not willing to, not being interested in cutting spending as aggressively as we had originally hoped.
And who communicated that from the White House perspective?
Taxon.
I don't recall.
Someone communicated it.
I don't recall, honestly, who said it.
Might have been Elon Musk.
But it was said.
And did you say anything at that meeting?
No.
Why were you invited to that meeting?
Because I was a senior official within Doge.
You mentioned Elon Musk.
Did you ever talk to Elon Musk about NEH?
You weren't terminated from the government.
You left on your own?
I might have covered some of this earlier, but I want to make sure it's covered.
So when you were working in the government, what email addresses did you use for work?
It would have been NATE, my GSA email.
In many of the agencies, we were assigned an agency email address.
In certain cases, we would use that.
In others, we wouldn't.
Subpoena Document Responses00:15:19
It would just be at the agency's discretion, whatever the agency had preferred.
And you said that you also used the special.co email.
In the case of forwarding a scorecard to Steve Davis for weekly reporting.
That was the only reason you used it?
I believe so, yes.
What other apps did you use to do government business?
You already referenced Signal, correct?
Yes.
Anything else?
I don't believe so.
No.
It would have been Signal, Gmail, and GSA's Google workspace environment.
What about just normal iPhone messaging?
No.
WhatsApp?
No.
Did you use Signal daily?
Not daily, but multiple times per week.
So you never texted with Fox about work?
No.
You would signal with him, though?
You either talk in person at GSA on Google Chat, which is GSA's approved internal workspace communication tool, or it would be on Signal.
One of those three.
I'm going to show you a document subpoena that we issued to you in connection with this case.
This will be plaintiffs 24.
At least 26.
Yeah, 26.
Minus 26, excuse me.
The document subpoena we issued to you.
Feel free to take a look.
Have you seen this document before?
I believe I've seen the first page.
I don't know if I've seen the latter pages.
I don't recall, honestly.
So feel free to take your time and take a look.
This was a document subpoena directing you to produce responsive documents by January 9th.
And then pages 5 and 6 list the categories of documents we requested you to produce.
Taking a look at those requests on pages 5 and 6, does that jog your memory as to whether you've seen this before?
No.
So I take it then you didn't.
Did you search for documents responsive to the subpoena?
Yes, I did.
But I don't recall these exact two paragraphs.
What did you do to search for documents responsive to the subpoena?
I searched my personal phone and personal computer of which there was nothing to produce and then let the U.S. attorney know that I used my government devices for everything else related to this case.
But you couldn't get those signal messages because they had been automatically deleted by Signal.
So there's nothing to provide.
Have you had any conversations on Signal about this case since receiving this document subpoena?
No.
No.
Did DOJ counsel instruct you to preserve documents responsive to this subpoena or otherwise relevant to this case?
Yes.
And when you said you searched for documents responsive to the subpoena, can you say a little bit more what you actually did?
Did you run search terms in your email or what exactly did you do?
I ran search terms in my email.
I looked through my personal Google Drive.
I looked on my phone for photos, videos, of which there were none.
Text messages, there were none.
And then on Signal, I knew that they were automatically deleted by Signal, so there was nothing to provide.
Do you remember what those search terms were that you used to search?
Probably Doge, NEH, terms in that vein.
I don't remember exactly.
And you understand you're under an obligation to preserve relevant documents in connection with this case while it's still pending.
We've talked about a number of meetings today I know about where grant terminations at NEH were discussed.
Were there any other meetings besides the ones that we've discussed today at this deposition that you recall having about grant terminations at any age?
Not outside of the ones we've discussed.
I mean, Justin and I would have been sitting together within GSA having not explicit meetings about NEH, but where NEH was a topic around the status of the terminations, the grants we were going to terminate, et cetera.
But no other specific ones that are, in my view, worth mentioning that you don't already know about.
And of those meetings with Justin, those day-to-day meetings, do you recall any that we haven't talked about already where you talked about significant action items in terms of what you were going to do at NEH?
We knew that as a result of the fairly large amount of contracting grant terminations, the corresponding personnel that would be required at NEH should also be reduced.
And so we had conversations around the RIF plan.
But that's really it.
And we've reviewed several documents, emails, discussing grant terminations at NEH.
Aside from the ones we've talked about today, do you recall any other significant ones where you were conveying your proposal or responding to questions from McDonald or Wolfson about the grant terminations?
No.
You mentioned earlier that you had a prep session with Counsel for the United States yesterday.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Did Counsel for the United States advise you to say that the final decision whether to terminate grants was Michael McDonald's?
No.
Objection.
No.
What's the base for the objection?
asking about our, you know, the discussions that we had about his employment and his time in the government are privileged, and I don't think it's, well, first of all, I think what you're suggesting isn't appropriate, but you shouldn't be asking him about the content of discussions that we had about his time in the government.
And no.
Okay.
Give me just one sec.
Thank you very much for your time today.
I'm done with my questions.
My colleague from the Authors Guild might have a few questions.
I will say we are keeping the deposition open for a couple reasons, one of which is there's a privilege dispute between the parties that you don't need to concern yourself with too much about whether we have all the non-privileged documents in our possession.
The court has said that all depositions are going to remain open until that privilege dispute is resolved, and that witnesses might need to become available again for further questioning, depending on the outcome of that.
Just so you know, so we're waiting for that instruction from the court, but subject to that, I have no further questions.
Thank you for your time, and I'll turn it over to my colleague.
Maybe it makes sense to take a five-minute break just to get set up.
I'm good.
If you're good, let's just do it.
I think it's a good five minute.
The time is 2:35, and that I'm off the record.
Time is 2:45, and we're not back on the record.
Good afternoon, Mr. Demon.
My name is Yin Kanayemi.
I am an attorney for Firmware Partners, representing the Authors Guild in this litigation, and also several individuals whose grants were canceled in April.
So, Mr. Robinson started this morning by asking you a number of questions about whether you've been deposed before, for instance, and you said no.
Is that correct?
Yes.
And you remember the reporter puts you under oath this morning?
Yes.
And that oath was to tell the truth during this deposition?
Yes.
Have you told the truth?
Yes.
And you understand that oath has the same force and effect as if it were given in an actual court of law, correct?
Yes.
And you understand that lying under that oath could expose you to criminal perjury charges?
Yes.
And you understand, just for the purposes of my questioning, that you're still under oath?
Yes.
So you mentioned this earlier this morning, but you met with Ms. Dowd yesterday for two hours.
Is that right?
Is that Rachel's last name?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
Counsel here, right?
Her and her colleague for approximately two hours.
I don't know the exact time.
Great.
And her colleague was Mary Ellen.
We've determined.
Yes.
Okay.
Have you had any other conversations with government attorneys relating to this lawsuit?
No.
Not at all.
Government attorneys?
No.
Okay.
Not with Ms. Dowd?
Besides the two yesterday?
No.
And you hadn't met with them previously?
No.
Did you sign any type of engagement agreement with Ms. Dowd yesterday during your conversation?
No.
Okay.
And is it your understanding that you're represented by Ms. Dowd today?
That is not my understanding.
Okay.
When you talked with counsel yesterday, did they tell you how you should answer potential questions that you'd get from us today?
No.
They didn't advise you on proper answers to questions?
No.
In any capacity?
No.
Okay.
And when you met with counsel yesterday, did counsel give you any factual information about the NEH grant terminations that you didn't previously know?
That I didn't previously know.
I don't believe so.
Unless there were emails that I wasn't copied on that were part of the documents that your colleague showed today.
No.
So you did see emails that you weren't copied on?
Yesterday I saw emails that I was not copied on between Justin and Mike McDonald, for example, that I was shown.
And you wouldn't have known that previously to meeting with that.
I would have known that Justin and Mike McDonald were having email correspondence, but the exact email I wasn't copied on, I didn't know that until yesterday.
Was there anything else you saw yesterday that you didn't know at the time of your employment with the government?
I don't believe so, no.
What gave you clause?
Just thinking, because I'm under oath.
What factual information did you discuss with counsel yesterday?
What factual information?
I'm just cautioning you that our discussions about your employment by the government are privileged, so you should not get into the substance of such discussions.
Okay.
You can still answer.
I'm not going to get into the substance.
Outside of.
So are you, is your position that there was nothing that you talked about yesterday that would have been factual information that wouldn't be covered by privilege?
Can you repeat your question?
Is there anything that you talked about yesterday that wouldn't be covered by the privilege that Ms. Dowd is invoking now?
I don't know.
Did you review, you said you reviewed documents yesterday as well?
We did review documents, yes.
Okay.
And did reviewing those documents help you to refresh your recollection about your time at the government?
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
What documents did you review?
I don't think we need to get into the substance of the documents.
You just said that they helped you to review, refresh your records.
They were the same email correspondence and list of grants that we reviewed today.
Okay, great.
So that's what you reviewed yesterday.
Yeah.
Anything else?
No, not that I can recall.
Only what we've seen today and lists of grants, nothing else?
I think so, yeah.
Okay.
Do you understand NEH and the U.S. Doge service to be different agencies?
Do I understand NEH?
Yes, I understand there are different agencies.
Okay.
And what about the U.S. Doge Service and the GSA?
Yes, I understand there are different agencies.
NEH and GSA?
Jackson DeForum.
Are they also different agencies?
Yes.
Okay.
Federal Deficit Reduction Claims00:06:11
So you referenced earlier someone named Justin Aminetti.
Do you remember that conversation that you had with Mr. Robinson?
With Mr. Robinson?
The attorney sitting right there, yeah.
Sorry.
Yes.
Okay.
And it's your understanding that he was an attorney.
Is that right?
That he was an attorney.
That Mr. Aminetti was an affiliate.
Yes.
Okay.
And for what agency was he an attorney?
I believe he was employed by the executive office of the president, EOP.
But he could have been legally employed by GSA.
I don't know.
But my understanding was that he was affiliated with EOP.
He had an EOP email address.
Okay.
And you were communicating with him on that email address?
When we communicated, it was through that email address, yes.
And are you familiar with someone named Ashley Boiselle?
Yes.
Did you understand that she was an attorney as well?
Yes.
And do you know where she worked?
I believe the same EOP.
Okay.
And did you communicate with her?
Not actively.
I think we sent her an email, but she was not engaged at all with our team.
So most of our correspondence in the legal context was with Justin Eminetti.
Okay.
And you weren't employed by the EOP, right?
That's right.
Who are you employed by?
GSA.
And Justin Fox was also employed by GSA?
Yes.
Thank you.
Kind of a broad question, but how do you feel about being here today?
I'm not sure I have a great answer for you.
What do you feel?
Are you frustrated, happy, sad?
Neutral.
Totally neutral.
Neutral.
Okay.
Do you think being here is kind of a waste of time?
No.
No?
No, I don't think it's a waste of time.
Sure, yeah, that's great.
So you did quite a bit of work at GSA and NEH in a pretty short amount of time.
Reflecting on those months, so February, March, April, how do you feel about the work that you accomplished while there?
Jackson went to four at NEH specifically, or my entire time at DeFi?
I think it was comprehensive.
Yeah, completely proud of what you did.
Yes.
Proud of the work you did for the government?
Yes.
And generally at the GSA, are you proud of the work that you care about?
We didn't do very much work at GSA, but yes.
Looking back at your time at the NEH, would you have done anything differently in hindsight?
I wasn't the primary lead at NEH, so probably not.
No, I think it roughly came out to what we ended pretty close to what our plan was with Mike and Adam.
So no.
Okay.
So I think we discussed earlier that roughly 1,500 grants were terminated under the purview of a combination of you, Justin, Mike, and Adam, right?
Jackson.
It was when you say under the purview, what do you mean exactly?
I guess I just mean like during your tenure, around 1,500 grants were canceled during that period.
Yeah, yes.
And each of those grants funded projects, real projects by real people, kind of working on scholarly works.
Some of those funds were used to pay for housing and to generally further their work.
Now those funds are gone, does that make you feel anything in particular?
Exactly.
No.
You don't regret that people might have lost important income to support their lives?
Exactly.
No.
I think it was more important to reduce the federal deficit from $2 trillion to close to zero.
Did you reduce the federal deficit?
No, we didn't.
You did?
No, I don't believe we did.
Okay.
So you did reduce the deficit?
Right?
Sorry?
You said you didn't reduce the deficit?
I think if you look at the net deficit from 2024 to 2025, I actually think it's close to a net zero, unfortunately.
Okay.
So you weren't able to reduce the deficit and you still don't regret that people lost some of their livelihood based on your actions.
Objection?
No.
Okay.
What authority did you believe you were exercising in this work, the NH?
I didn't think we had any authority other than to serve as effectively advisors to the heads of the agencies in which we were detailed.
So our job was to be just that, advisors to the heads of the agencies and help them identify waste.
So changing gears a little bit.
You noted that you had no political experience before meeting with Mr. Davis early on.
I think you said January 2025.
No political experience.
How are you defining experience exactly?
I guess did you have a role in government prior to that time?
No.
Not in state government?
No.
Local government?
No.
Federal?
No.
Were you student government at all?
No.
Okay.
Political Experience Definition00:02:01
No political campaigns?
I donated to the Obama campaign in 2012.
Outside of that, no.
Awesome.
But you said that you were generally, I think, informally interested in politics to some degree.
Yes.
What did you mean when you said that?
Sorry.
What did you mean when you said that?
When I said what?
That you were generally informally interested in politics?
It meant that it was important to me to keep a close, closely informed on what was happening in the United States from a policy perspective across the economy, foreign policy, social issues, et cetera.
How did you keep up with those things?
Reading books, reading the news, reading Twitter, X, watching the news.
How do you get your news?
Mostly on X and Twitter.
Any people that you follow in particular that keep you abreast?
Any people that are following me?
Not in particular.
I have a pretty balanced political news diet.
You said you read the news.
What do you read as news?
What publications?
Objection.
I'm just going to note that this is going very far afield from anything relevant in this case.
What do I read?
I read MSNBC, CNN, Fox.
I read long-form substack articles, books, policy proposals, tweets.
Pretty diverse diet of news sources.
So you noted a few times today that you were interested in joining government because you wanted to help to reduce the federal deficit, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And we just talked about the fact that that actually didn't happen.
Not to the extent by which I and many others of the Doge team had hoped for.
That's right.
Hiring and DEI Understanding00:14:03
Okay.
Were you also interested in joining because you were aligned on more substantive issues like DEI and gender ideology?
That wasn't the initial interest in joining, but ideologically I don't believe in those things.
But that wasn't the primary reason for joining.
What do you mean you don't believe in those things?
I don't believe in making decisions in a governmental context or business context, frankly, based on DEI.
I believe on making decisions based on merit.
Sorry, when you say based on DEI, what is based on DEI?
Based on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Traits other than skill.
Right.
So give me an example of something that's based on DEI.
Let's see.
If you make a hire in a position based on something other than a person's merit, I consider that to be effectively DEI.
Right.
So anytime you don't consider merit in a decision about hiring, that's DEI.
No, that's not the exhaustive standard that I have.
Okay.
What's the exhaustive standard?
What is the exhaust?
In what context?
Any context.
You can pick the context.
Charge.
Can you repeat your question?
What is the exhaustive context by which I'm just asking you to explain what you just said?
You said that's not the exhaustive context, so tell me what the exhaustive context is.
Of DEI?
Yes, like what is your understanding of DEI?
I just told you my definition of DEI is making decisions on anything other than merit and skill.
And is that the exhaustive definition to you?
I think that's the simple, concise definition.
Okay.
And so you were basing your selection of certain grants based on that conception of DEI?
We were making decisions on what grants to terminate based on the White House's executive orders, which referenced DEI and preferential treatment, among other things, in those EOs.
And also wasteful spending as was our admittedly subjective understanding of what could help reduce the deficit.
Okay, so let's focus on the DEI element for now.
And then we'll get to wasteful spending in a minute.
But you were testifying that you were basing the fact that you were looking for DEI on the EOs, but then you were applying your understanding of DEI as you were reviewing grants.
Is that fair to say?
That's fair to say.
Yes.
And so that conception of DEI that we were just talking about is the same DEI that you were using, the same conception that you were using as you looked at grants.
Is that right?
That was one of the factors.
Yes.
Okay.
So just hiring people without merit without considering merit, that's DEI?
Jackson says.
Yeah.
I don't understand your question, frankly.
I guess you're just saying hiring someone and not considering the merits is DEI.
That was the balance of which you described, just defined.
That was not the balance by which we canceled grants.
Okay.
So how did you cancel grants?
Do you want to pull up a list of some examples of grants that were terminated and I can show you the principle by which we canceled them on the basis of DEI?
Many of them referenced explicitly DEI in the grant line and description.
Okay.
And so I understand that, but let's say they didn't say DEI.
How do you know that it was DEI then?
Because what I'm understanding is that your conception of DEI has something to do with hiring and not considering merits.
That's one example.
Hold on, objection.
When we try to have questions that are like a little bit more standard questions that don't have baked in various asides, I think it's getting a little confusing here.
I'm not sure what you mean, frankly.
Well, like the question that you had, you had multiple pieces, some of which were you characterizing what he was allegedly saying, and it's sort of just not an appropriate question.
I think it's getting also confusing, but objection.
I'll do my best, but I think I can try to gather understanding of what this is saying.
Okay, so DEI, it sounds like to you, has something to do with hiring.
Is that one component under which DEI can be applied?
And I'm asking you for the others.
So what are the others?
In the context of the NEH grants?
Sure.
Can you pull up some of the NEH grants?
There were 1,500 of them.
Presumably you can pull up one or two that were canceled.
I think we need to pull it up to get your understanding of DEI.
So you played a role in determining what grants would be canceled based on DEI, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And sitting here today, you can't give a definition of DEI without looking at the grants?
Objection.
Many of the grants that we canceled explicitly said DEI in the description.
Okay.
So is that the only basis through which you canceled grants if they said DEI didn't?
No.
That's not the only basis.
So what other bases did you use?
As we discussed before, it was also could have been wasteful spending.
It wasn't just on the basis of DEI.
So wasteful spending or if DEI was explicitly noted in the grant description?
Those were two of the driving primary criteria, yes?
I think we looked at some grants earlier that didn't explicitly say DEI in the grant description.
Okay, maybe this fell in the wasteful spending bucket then.
So I want to go back to something you said earlier in testifying.
You noted that during the process of terminating grants, quote, it is well understood that you were required to read the actual grant description before requesting that it be terminated.
Do you remember testifying about that?
Yeah, we would read the full description on the list of grants that were exported from the grant management system or in the USA spending data export.
Okay.
And you said this was well understood.
What did you base that on?
It was well understood by myself and my team, the small agency's team, and it was well understood among the Doge team and culture that you couldn't just randomly recommend to an agency head to terminate a grant or contract unless you thoroughly understood what it said and had a basis for doing so, either based on an executive order or through the lens of wasteful spending.
When you talk about this culture, like what exactly did you perceive that gave you that idea?
What did I perceive that gave me the idea that what?
That was part of the culture.
Because it was spoken about explicitly that you need to be precise in your cutting efforts.
It wasn't a random exercise.
Who told you that?
Steve Davis made that very clear to the Doge team that that was the principle by which you should operate.
And he said explicitly you should read every grant before canceling?
Yes.
You don't say grants.
I think so you should read the grants.
Grant description, contract, et cetera.
Yes.
Got it.
And do you understand that each grant application at NEH comes with an entire file beyond just the grant description?
I do, yes.
Did Mr. Davis also tell you to read those?
He did not.
Did you read those?
I did not.
Why not?
Our judgment was that we could get a relatively thorough description of the grant purpose by reading the multi-sentence description that was listed in the export from their grant system and from USA spending.
So you thought it was proper to cancel grants based on one paragraph descriptions?
Objection.
If they referenced explicitly executive orders that were signed by the White House, such as explicitly stating DEI, yes.
And to be clear, we weren't canceling them.
The head of the agency approved the cancellations and then submitted terminations.
And then submitted terminations.
I'm asking you if when you were marking grants or terminations or recommend marking of the recommendations to terminate it, you thought that this one paragraph description was sufficient to mark those.
The amount of data that was on a single row about a grant was sufficient enough to make a judgment call for recommendation to the agency head.
Yes.
So I want to go back to something you said a bit earlier in reference to the agencies listed in EO 14238, which listed a number of agencies that were going to be kind of downsized and diminished to the statutory minimum, including like Federal Mediation Conciliation Service, etc.
You referred to these as quote useless agencies.
Do you remember that testimony from this morning?
Yes.
Okay.
What did you mean by useless?
I believe this is privileged, actually, so I'm not going to answer this.
You can't actually create privilege for yourself, so okay.
I believe there was a naming that I didn't come up with internally at Doge that described the agencies that were in that executive order as quote useless agencies.
When the official executive order actually came out, I believe the title, I mean, if you have the EO in front of you, there was an official name for that executive order that said something about the commencing the reduction of the federal bureaucracy or something to that effect.
Okay.
So it was spoken about inside of Doge this term useless was used inside of Doge prior to the okay.
I'm going to instruct you not to get further into what Doge lawyers were saying.
Sorry, which lawyers, please?
I don't know who created the draft of the executive order.
Okay, so this term useless came from lawyers, right?
I don't know who named it that.
Okay, you can't just actually claim privilege if you have no idea if lawyers were involved with this conversation.
I'm talking to you now, actually.
Okay, and that is inappropriate.
I can take a break with him and ask him to explain what he knows about lawyers involved, but the things you were saying are inappropriate.
He just said he thought lawyers were involved, and you're sort of suggesting that he's making something up, and I do not think that's appropriate, but why don't we go off the record?
So I can discuss this with him.
Before that, I'd like to finish the conversation.
No, not with him, with you.
Okay, so just to keep it on the record, okay.
He claimed privilege on his own, and then I responded that he can't do that.
And he never actually invoked or referenced any attorney being involved in the conversation.
Okay, so I just wanted to let you know that.
Actually, actually, he did.
Okay, sure.
We can go through that.
Can you read it back where he referred to attorneys, please?
I have to look for it.
Okay.
It's like the prior couple of questions he explicitly referred to attorneys.
Okay.
So if you're saying for specific attorneys, but that's okay.
Okay, so you agree he did refer to attorneys.
Okay.
Okay.
We can go for it.
No, we're going to go through it.
The time is 3.12, and we're now off the record.
The time is 3.15, and we're now back on the record.
Okay.
Mr. Kavanaugh, so we just talked about the term useless and where it came from.
It seems like you and your attorney are both saying that those conversations were privileged.
Is that your current position?
Yes.
Okay, and you're gonna refuse to answer based on that?
Yes.
Okay.
Um do you know the t who the attorneys were that were involved?
Um I know some of them, not all of them.
Okay.
Which ones do you know?
Um Justin Eminetti and James Burnham.
So what's your understanding of what the word useless means in this context?
Um no longer uh required to continue operating in the context of a federal agency.
Okay.
Um so do you know how agencies are generally created in our government system?
Um they're created by statute.
Okay.
Yes.
Statute meaning through Congress?
Yes.
Okay.
Um and is it your understanding that based on what the executive branch deems to be useless an agency can be paired back or destroyed in entirety?
Objection.
That's that's not my understanding.
I think agencies need to be if they're fully eliminated it needs to be through Congress.
Okay.
But the executive order language explicitly said statutory minimum functions.
Okay.
Signal Usage for Government Work00:03:43
So changing gears a little bit, you noted that you communicated with Mr. Davis via Signal.
Do you remember that conversation?
Yes, I do.
Okay.
Did you communicate with anyone else at Doge via Signal?
Yes.
Who?
In the course of NEH or generally?
Generally.
It'd be a pretty long list.
Justin Fox, Ethan Choutran, occasionally James Burnham, Steve Davis, Bear Shakis.
I don't know.
Beyond that, I think that's the core scope.
Okay.
And how did you decide to use Signal with all these people at Doge?
That was the preferred communication platform when I joined, and that was just when I joined, that was where I was told a lot of conversations were occurring.
Did you have an understanding of the reason that Signal specific was used?
I didn't.
Do you think it was because of its auto-delete function?
Probably, yes.
But I don't know for sure.
Okay.
And so what do you think that would have what kind of benefit would that have conferred on Doge?
Objection.
What benefit would that have conferred on for Doge?
I'm not sure.
Okay.
But you were doing government work, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And you're using an auto-delete platform to do government work?
That was not the only platform we used to do government work.
It was one of them.
It was one of them.
Okay.
Did you see that there was an issue using an auto-delete service to do government work on?
No.
No.
I didn't really think much of it because it was already used when I joined.
Did anyone discuss that being an issue potentially?
Not to me explicitly, no.
Okay.
Implicitly?
No, I don't believe so.
What other services did you use besides Signal?
I think we covered this already.
Google, Workspace, which includes all of Google's enterprise products.
Drive, Gmail, Calendar, et cetera.
Docs.
Yeah.
And you said that no one ever voiced a concern to you explicitly.
Did someone explicitly voice a concern to someone else?
About what?
About using an auto-delete service for government work.
Did somebody ever tell somebody else that this could be I wouldn't have been privy to the conversation for when you said ex when you kind of said explicitly, what did you mean by explicitly?
Nobody told me that that would have been an issue to you, so you don't.
And you weren't privy to any other conversations within the agency about that being a concern?
No.
And you noted that you talked to Mr. Fox about this lawsuit at some point.
Is that right?
That's right.
When did you talk to Mr. Fox about the lawsuit?
I don't recall the exact date, actually.
It would have been a few weeks ago.
And the context was basically that we're both being having an episode, and that was the extent of the conversation.
How did you talk to him?
Salary Pay Cut Discussion00:02:44
We were actually in person together working in New York.
We work in the same office for the same company, so it was in person, actually.
Okay, I think I'll come back to this in a minute, but I wanted to take a step back.
So we talked about this way at the beginning, but you worked for FlowFi, is that how you pronounce it?
Flow Finance.
Flow Finance and BrainBase before coming to the government for work?
Yes.
Any other jobs?
I don't believe so.
How much were you making at Flow Finance?
My salary was probably $250,000 a year or so.
And was that your last job before joining government?
Yes.
Yes.
So you took a pay cut of almost half to join government.
Is that right?
Yeah, I didn't actually want to be paid by Doge, but it was a requirement to be employed by GSA.
You had to take a salary if you weren't a special government employee.
Okay.
Why would you be okay with working for Doge for free?
Because I've already made enough money in my career where an incremental $120,000 doesn't make a difference for me.
And if our whole mission is to cut costs, it felt a little bit strange to be taking a salary from the government.
Okay.
So would you say that you were willing to take that salary cut because of some sort of mission alignment based on federal deficit reduction?
Yes.
Any other reason that you take such an extraordinary pay cut?
It's not that extraordinary to me, frankly.
Sure.
Okay, I guess I would say I would imagine that taking half cut is a lot for a lot of people, but for you, it's okay that you don't think that that's a lot.
But in sense of why you would do that, why you'd go down to zero or why you could cut by half, like, what exactly was your thinking in accepting that to do that?
I sold my first company when I was 24.
I was fortunate to make a lot of money.
After that happened, I didn't need to make an extra $120,000 to take a job helping reduce the federal deficit.
I didn't think it was necessary.
In a startup, you make all of your money in equity.
the salary is an afterthought.
Biden Administration Grant Violations00:04:54
So what's your understanding of who Steve Davis was employed by during your time with the government?
I don't know which agency he was employed by.
I believe it was the EOP, Executive Officer of the President, but I don't know for sure.
How did you communicate with Mr. Davis?
In person and occasionally over signal.
Did you ever email him?
I probably sent him less than 10 emails in total in my time in government.
Most of our conversations were in person at GSA, where we both primarily worked or over signal.
And that's the signal account that you have on your personal phone?
Yes.
Okay.
When was the last time that you communicated to Mr. Davis?
A week ago, maybe.
Okay.
Is his signal account attached to his phone number?
I don't know.
Can you check?
It's not.
It's just his name?
I'm asking.
Yes.
You have to answer it with the yes or no question.
And there's no phone number attached to that account at all?
No.
Okay.
When you talked to Mr. Davis, did you talk about this case?
No.
Did you talk about your work with the government?
No.
Okay.
It was just a friendly conversation between you two?
He's an investor in my new company, so we talked about business.
And you were not an employee of U.S. Doge service while you were with the government, right?
Correct.
So earlier you testified that Adam and Michael McDonald told you that they believed that the Biden administration administered grants that violated EOs the most.
Jackson has testified.
Do you remember testifying about that conversation?
Can you repeat you?
I don't know.
The reason that I stated that is because I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but you testified generally about how in a conversation with Mr. McDonald and Mr. Wolfson, they expressed that they believed that the Biden administration had administered grants that violated the EOs.
Jackson.
Is that right?
That was their belief, yes.
Okay.
And which EOs were they referring to?
i'll find them for you okay do you have mike's testimony somewhere The declaration.
It's here.
Executive Order 14151, ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.
Executive Order 14173 ending illegal discrimination and restoring marriage-based opportunity.
And then the remainder in this paragraph, paragraph six of his declaration.
Right.
Did they tell you why they believed that the Biden administration had the most violative grants under the EI?
Did they say why?
They did not say why.
They just said as a matter of fact that they had actively promoted DEI policies over the last four years.
They actively promoted and issued grants related to DEI over the last four years.
Okay.
Did they ever mention anything about grants issued under the first Trump administration?
They didn't explicitly, but Justin and I went through the grants that were still outstanding under the first Trump administration for review for waste and DEI as well.
Okay.
Sexual Orientation Grant Cancellations00:08:02
What did you end up doing with those grants?
Most of them were already terminated because grant terms are typically two to four year increments.
So there was no balance remaining on the vast majority of them.
But to the extent that there were any outstanding, we reviewed which of them could be cut for wasteful spending.
I don't have the list in front of me.
Okay, fair.
So earlier, again, you testified about a specific grant that was displayed by my colleague that was about stories about black people and gay people.
And you referred to them as preferencing black and gay people.
Do you remember that testimony?
Yeah.
Okay.
What did you mean by preferencing as used there?
Preferencing on the matter of race or sexual orientation.
Okay.
And preference means what?
Exactly.
Preferencing means choosing one race over another based on race or sexual orientation.
Okay.
So a grant, in this context, a grant about black people or gay people would be preferencing black people and gay people?
Actually.
That was the initial lens under which we reviewed that grant, yeah.
Okay.
And so would like any story about a black or gay person be preferencing black people and gay people?
No.
Okay.
So why in this case was it?
Because there's a monetary value in a grant assigned from the federal government to a specific race or person from a sexual orientation.
Okay.
A general story about a black person or a gay person doesn't have monetary value assigned to it.
Okay.
So your idea of your work was isolating and identifying grants that preferenced black people or gay people or other minorities?
It wasn't just minorities.
If there was a grant that just went to white people, we would have had the same view.
You shouldn't have preferencing.
Okay.
And what differentiated a grant that preferenced black people versus a grant that didn't preference black people?
I mean, you can review them on a grant-by-grant basis, which we did.
Okay.
If you have a specific grant in mind, I'm happy to go through it with you.
We don't have to know.
I mean, we've seen them already.
Did you also cancel grants that preferenced women, for instance?
Explicitly women?
I don't believe so.
No.
Were there any other categories of preferential treatment that would render a grant subject to termination, to your view?
Broadly, they would have been under the DEI bucket.
The wasteful spending bucket is separate.
In the DEI bucket, it would have been grants that gave preference to a specific race, any race, gender, or sexual orientation, any of those buckets.
Sure.
And then earlier you testified that grants involving DEI viewpoints were wasteful.
Do you remember testifying to that?
I don't actually.
Do you believe that?
I do believe DEI grants are wasteful, but we can still evaluate grants through two separate lenses.
Something can be wasteful and not related to DEI.
Okay.
And what exactly is wasteful about a DEI viewpoint?
My personal opinion.
Sure.
My personal opinion is that we have a, and the culture of Doge was to reduce the federal deficit.
And my personal view is that grants related to DEI are wasteful and unnecessary and are not chosen on the matter of merit and skill.
And so they're wasteful in the context of a $2 trillion annual deficit.
They should be cut.
Okay.
You testified that two categories of grants were marked for saving, ones that related to the founding of the country and others that were related to the Garden of Heroes.
Do you remember that testimony?
Yes.
Okay.
What does founding of the country mean in that context?
They were grants related to the founding fathers of the U.S., George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc.
I think your colleague showed the grants that ended up being kept basically related to other historical figures like Albert Einstein, et cetera.
As being part of the founding of the country?
I'm acknowledging Albert Einstein was not part of the founding of the country.
Okay.
And so the founding fathers, and was there kind of like a period, certain years that you looked at as being the founding of the country?
No, we looked for grants that were politically neutral.
Okay.
That had to deal with the founding of the country.
Right.
And that both parties could look and say that these are not political grants and are worth continuing.
Again, it was a judgment call that we initially made and then Mike and Adam ultimately signed off on.
A judgment call made by you and Justin.
And Mike and Adam.
Okay.
You said we initially made.
Who are you referring to when you said we?
Myself and Justin went through line by line of the grants.
Okay.
So did you have a supervisor when you were working for the NEH, working with the NEH?
No.
Okay.
You were asked that earlier, you said no, and then you kind of corrected and said, you know, kind of in a way, Steve Davis.
Remember that?
Objection.
Steve Davis was my manager at Doge, but he wasn't checking in for frequent updates on a grant-by-grant level for NEH.
So if you had a question about, let's say, whether a grant was violative of, or had DEI in it, for instance, or was a borderline call, how would you get clarity on how to deal with that?
Justin and I made a personal judgment call and then reviewed that judgment call with Mike and with Adam.
Okay.
Do you have any history in like, let's say, scholarly peer review?
No.
Okay.
So, but this judgment call was made by you and your personal judgment combined with Justin's personal judgment to cancel grants based on DEI.
Yes.
Okay.
Do you think it's inappropriate in any way that someone in their 20s with no experience with grants or federal government was making personal judgment calls about what grants to cancel?
Objection.
No, I don't think it's inappropriate.
Okay.
Why not?
Objection.
I think a person can have enough judgment from reading books and being well informed outside of traditional experience to make judgment calls about obvious things like a grant that literally lists DEI in its description to know whether it violates an executive order.
I don't think you need to be have a scholarly peer review background to do that.
Okay.
So presumably you read some of these books that would have informed you on how to cancel a grant based on DEI?
Objection.
I did not read a book on how to discern whether a grant includes DEI or not.
I read the actual description of the actual grant.
Okay.
You just, I'm sorry.
I'm saying books because you said books.
What books would you have read that would have informed your opinion on what grants to cancel based on DEI or not?
There were no books.
Okay.
So there are no books.
Personal Phone Device Usage00:07:49
Anything else that would have informed you on how to do this?
No.
Just kind of your whims, I guess.
Is that what you're saying?
Objection.
They're not my whims.
It's my judgment of how to interpret a grant that includes DEI characteristics or our wasteful spend.
Right.
And there was no one that you were consulting to make that call.
No.
Okay.
Did you ever talk to Justin about edge cases?
Edge cases?
Cases on the edge?
Yeah, if there was an edge, again, the lens by which we were making decisions, I know you're very focused on DEI.
The only lens was not DEI, it was also wasteful spending.
The priorities for NEH's grants were related to the founding of the country or America 250 initiative this year or the Garden of Heroes.
If the grants didn't fall in those three buckets and met a DEI criteria or, in our view, were wasteful spending, we would flag those grants for review for Mike and Adam to agree with.
If there was an edge case, we leaned on the side of cutting it because Doge's mission was to reduce federal spending.
We erred on the side of cut versus keep generally.
Okay.
Did you go through any type of HR onboarding when you joined GSA?
Yes.
Can you walk me through what that was?
I don't remember the specific courses we took.
It was like a multi-hour video series where you went through traditional corporate HR policies.
Okay.
Was it one day of onboarding, two days a week?
It's about a day or two of onboarding, including going through training, getting our PIV card, et cetera.
Okay.
Did you go through that onboarding with anyone else or by yourself?
Someone from GSAHR, but there were no other teammates with me during that time.
Did you fill out any paperwork as part of that process?
Did I fill out any paperwork after completing the HR training?
Or as part of the HR training?
I didn't fill out any paperwork regarding the HR training now.
Did you have a background check run on you?
I did.
Okay.
Did you go through any training on how to maintain government records?
I believe so.
Yes.
Yes.
I don't recall exactly what was in there, but yes.
Did it touch at all on using auto-delete services?
I honestly don't recall.
Did the onboarding, did you receive as part of the onboarding process a government laptop and phone?
Yes.
Okay.
And did you have you since returned those after leaving government?
Yes.
So earlier we talked about some of your communications with Mr. Davis, including, well, in the context of you emailing yourself, I think you were saying, and then using that email on signal to send to Mr. Davis.
Do you remember talking about that with Mr. Robinson earlier?
I do.
Okay.
Walk me through that process exactly a little bit.
There was a weekly scorecard, as it was called, where we reported on savings across each agency.
It was black text in an Excel spreadsheet file.
That was downloaded.
Steve preferred that to be sent over Signal.
Signal is not on a government device, so we downloaded it and sent it to Steve on Signal.
That was the extent of...
So Mr. Davis was not on a government device?
I don't know if he was on a government device or not.
I know he preferred to receive the scorecard on Signal.
Okay.
Have you ever, do you know whether Mr. Davis had a government email?
I believe he had an EOP email address that he did not use.
And you never communicated with him on that email address?
I'm sure I sent him an email or two, but it was incredibly infrequent.
So I understand sending Mr. Davis something off of email based on his request, but why did you email something to yourself first before sending it to Mr. Davis?
There was no other way to get the scorecard that we generated to Steve on Signal.
You couldn't go directly from your government email to Signal?
Correct.
Why not?
I don't think GSA allowed the downloading of Signal, among many other apps.
So GSA didn't allow the downloading of Signal?
Is that what you're saying?
I believe so, yeah.
Okay.
But you then sidestepped that by sending documents to your personal phone so that you could then use Signal?
Jackson.
For the weekly scorecard, that was the process, yes.
And that didn't send any alarms about whether or not you should be using Signal to do government work, the fact that GSA didn't let you use Signal on your phone?
GSA didn't let you use a myriad of softwares that would have been common in a standard business.
And so I don't know if Signal is representative of, I don't think Signal is a unique case, frankly.
There were dozens of apps that weren't allowed on a government device.
Do you think that there's a reason that the government disallows using certain services on their devices?
I'm not sure.
You don't think it was because maybe they were concerned about data leaks or sharing information with people that shouldn't be receiving that information?
Objection.
I really don't know.
We have no idea why they would not allow Signal on government phones.
Jackson?
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I know many government officials use Signal, so I'm not totally sure.
Do you think maybe it was for the maintenance of records that they don't allow Signal an auto-delete app on government phones?
Jackson.
Yeah, again, I don't know.
You really don't know?
Objection.
really don't know.
Was Mr. Davis the only person that you communicated with in this way?
Yes.
Do you know if Mr. Davis had a government phone?
I don't know.
Presumably, yes, but I don't know.
Okay.
Let's go off the record for five minutes and then let's do ten minutes and come back.
The time is 3.44 and we're now going off the record.
Treasury Meeting Presentations00:05:50
Thanks.
The time is 3.59 and we're now back on the record.
Hello again.
I just want to revisit some testimony from earlier today.
You said that you had regular all-hands meetings with Steve Davis who led them.
Do you remember testifying about that?
Yes.
How often are those meetings?
Approximately weekly, but in certain cases less frequently than that.
How long do those meetings run?
Anywhere from 20 minutes to in cases where Elon was there two hours.
Did you ever talk at these meetings?
Yes.
Did you present to the group at these meetings?
Yes.
How many people were there typically?
It varied as Doge grew in size.
Okay.
So at minimum, how much?
20.
Maximum?
80.
Average per meeting?
50.
Okay.
What did you present to the group when you presented?
It varied based on the meeting.
Did you ever present on NEH at these meetings?
No.
Did you ever present on any of the other agencies that you were managing?
Yeah.
Which ones, for instance?
The United States Institute of Peace.
Why didn't you present on NEH?
Frankly, it wasn't worth presenting on.
There were more substantive updates, and it wasn't a big enough agency where it would have been relevant to the rest of the Doge team, so I didn't share it.
Okay.
So Mr. Fox didn't present either on the NEH?
How often would Mr. Musk show up at these meetings?
Once every three meetings, typically, and it was a subset of the group that would meet with him.
Were you ever part of that subset?
Yes.
What about Mr. Fox?
No.
Did Mr. Musk ever ask about grand cancellations at these meetings?
No.
Why did meetings with him usually go longer than your typical meetings without him?
A variety of reasons.
One, people had longer form updates to share with Elon.
Elon is More philosophical in the way that he speaks, and so it's less bullet point update-esque with him, and it's more long and drawn out, and sometimes you go off topic, and so they just tended to be longer.
Would you say that you were kind of learning about how to implement Doge's strategy at these meetings?
No, you weren't there unless you, you weren't on the Doge team unless you already had an instinct of how to move quickly and push changes through.
So there was nothing to be taught, really.
Okay.
So I guess I know there were a lot of meetings over a long period of time, but what was the typical substance that was discussed at these meetings?
Any potential the meetings focused on the larger cabinet-level agencies in the government.
So Department of Defense, State, Commerce, Treasury, and the heads of those teams were frankly taking up most of the time because the dollars associated were more important.
The small agencies, as the name implies, were smaller dollar-valued.
And so my updates were frequent but short.
And so the substance was basically high-level changes, any potential blockers, basically bullet point-level updates around changes.
You mentioned also that there was a meeting that you had at the White House.
Do you remember that testimony from earlier?
Yes.
Okay.
Tell me more about that meeting.
Who was there?
That meeting was in May.
It was Elon, Steve Davis, myself, I believe Howard Luttnick was there for a portion of it.
Antonio Gracias was there.
Jared Birchall, who's Elon's confidant, basically, and other members of the senior members of the Doge team.
Okay.
How did you end up at this meeting?
I was one of the ten leaders of a team at Doge.
So anyone that was effectively viewed as a leader was invited.
And so that was why I was there.
Who were the other leaders at Doge?
By that point, it changed over the course of time because people came and left and so forth.
At the time of this meeting, who were the other 10 leaders?
The ones I listed, plus Ed Korstein, Edward Korstein, was there.
He was working on the Treasury.
Witness Coaching Objections00:03:47
He wasn't our lead for the Treasury, but he was working on work at the Treasury.
Aram Moganasi, who worked at Social Security.
Jamie Sullivan, who was at OPM, Office of Personnel Management.
Jeremy Lewin, who was our lead at the State Department.
Maybe a few others I'm missing.
Okay, that's fine.
Could you describe what you believe the purpose of that meeting was?
I'm just going to object.
This whole line of questioning has nothing to do with this case.
This was a meeting that took place after the grant terminations at issue, and I do not see any connection to this case whatsoever.
Are you objecting on the basis of privilege?
I'm objecting on relevance, and I would like you to explain why this has anything to do with this case.
I'm sorry, Council, I don't need to explain why I'm asking questions, and I think it's very inappropriate that you're kind of coaching the witness right now.
I'm not coaching the witness.
I think it is inappropriate of you to try to take advantage of discovery in this case to ask about things with no connection whatsoever to this case.
I'd ask that you keep your objections to former foundation.
I generally have, but this is completely, very far afield from anything relating to this case at all.
Okay.
We're talking about the Doge team.
You're talking about a meeting that happened after.
Can I finish what I'm saying, please?
I will finish what I'm saying.
I'm trying to speak on the record, please.
So let me finish what I'm saying, and then I'll let you talk as well.
We're talking about the Doge team that deployed certain individuals to various agencies.
One of them was NEH.
And I'm trying to understand the strategy of Doge, the function of Doge, the org chart of Doge, which is all relevant to the case, as you know, and as the judge has said several times.
So I'm going to continue with my questioning.
If you have objections, again, I'd ask that you keep them to former foundation and not give speaking objections.
That is not what you are asking about currently.
There may be privileges implicated.
I don't know because this is not a topic we have discussed, given that it has nothing whatsoever to do with this case.
Okay.
Thank you for raising your objection.
Again, I am allowed to speak, and you are not allowed to tell me I'm not allowed to speak.
You cannot raise speaking objections.
We both know that that is.
Well, you can't ask questions that are not questions, but you've done that many, many times today.
I just want to get it on the record that counsel is coaching the witness.
I'm speaking to you and not saying anything to the witness or instructing him not to answer or anything like that.
I just am putting on the record that this line of questioning is irrelevant, and I do not think that it is appropriate for you to use this deposition to ask about things with nothing to do with this case.
Things that you don't think have to do with the case, but I'll digress.
It's okay.
I understand your point.
That you are unable to articulate as relating to this case because you're not asking about the structure.
This is incredible.
You continue to coach the witness.
Please keep your objections to former foundations.
I will say what I think is appropriate, and you will not tell me not to say things.
Okay, thank you.
Let's get back to the questioning, if we can.
Are you going to answer the questions here?
Can you repeat it?
Yeah, sure.
Could you repeat the last question that I asked the witness, please?
American Revolution Grant Preservation00:15:16
Could you describe what you believe the purpose of that meeting was?
Yes.
There was no stated purpose in advance of the meeting.
It was a general weekly catch-up with Elon.
And so it was often unclear what this topic of those would have been.
Why was this one at the White House versus other meetings?
Because the White House is connected to the Eisenhower building, and the weekly meetings with Elon would either have taken place in the White House or in the Eisenhower building.
I want to go back really briefly to your understanding of what the American Revolution means in the context of the grant relations that we've been discussing.
The American Revolution.
Right.
That's right.
So, If I understand correctly, one of your goals was to save, retain grants that had to do with the American Revolution, is that right?
No, that wasn't explicitly stated.
Okay.
So that wasn't one of the goals of keeping grants related to the American Revolution was not one of our guiding criteria for the founding of the country.
If there were papers related to the founding fathers of the country, our judgment was to not terminate those.
Okay.
Only the founding fathers or the greater context of the American Revolution and the founding of the country?
Which one?
I think they both would have fell in that general category, but it wasn't explicitly the American Revolution.
Okay.
But it was explicitly the Founding Fathers?
It wasn't explicitly the Founding Fathers.
It was a judgment call of figures around that time period of the country that we thought were apolitical and worth keeping.
When you say they were apolitical, what does that mean?
That they weren't related to DEI, and both a reasonable person would look at those and say that they're not political.
How would you determine what a reasonable person would think?
We're using our judgment.
Okay.
So if there was a grant that came from that time period that touched on the American Revolution or the Founding Fathers but referenced the word black or gay or LGBTQ plus or something, how would you determine whether that would be saved or not?
I don't know, that's a theoretical question, and that wasn't one of the grants that was included, so I don't know.
There were no grants that you canceled from that time period?
Do you have a list of grants?
We can look at the grants.
I don't know.
There were 1,500 of them.
I guess I'm asking, Megan, because it's kind of.
If you have a question about a specific grant, I'm happy to ask how we would have treated it.
Right, so if I give you an example of a grant, can you tell me how you would perceive whether that grant is DEI?
Is it an actual grant from NAH?
Well, I'll have to let you know.
So if there was a grant, let's say, about a black person during the founding of the country, and it said black or people of color in the description, would that grant be flagged for review based on the usage of the term black or person of color?
No, I wouldn't have.
How are you otherwise finding grants that were DEI?
Was it not through certain terms, certain words?
You would search DEI, DEIA, equity, inclusion, BIPOC, LGBTQ, LGBTQ plus, etc.
Okay.
So there was a grant that was canceled that was the description was 40 acres in the American Revolution, stories of independence and servitude, planning of exhibits and public programs exploring the lives of the enslaved and prisoners of war at the 40 Acres Farmstead in Hadley, Massachusetts during the American Revolutionary Period.
Is there something in that description that would flag DEI for you?
Jackson.
Can you read it again?
Sure.
40 Acres and the American Revolution, stories of independence and servitude, planning of exhibits and public programs exploring the lives of the enslaved and prisoners of war at the 40 Acres Farmstead in Hadley, Massachusetts during the American Revolutionary period.
No, there's nothing in there that would strike me as DEI.
So why do you think this was flagged?
As EAR or DEI, what was your last thing you said?
What?
As DEI?
Okay, sorry.
What was your question?
Why was this grant canceled, but other grants that related to the founding of the country not canceled?
I think we discussed this.
Maybe we didn't.
The only criteria that we used was not just DEI.
It was DEI plus our judgment about wasteful spend.
We had a broad mandate to reduce the amount of grants that were allied at NEH.
And that was not one of the priorities that the administration cited as important, so it was cut, not on the basis of DEI, on the basis of being unnecessary and wasteful.
But you were promoting the founding of the country, right?
Jackson.
We were promoting the founding of the country.
No, that's not what we were doing.
Okay, I guess it appears to me, and tell me if I'm wrong, but one of the goals of your work was to preserve grants that were about, as you said, the Founding Fathers, the American Revolution.
I didn't say the American Revolution, you said the American Revolution.
So let's actually figure out exactly what you meant by this.
What exactly, in this context of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers, what exactly were you trying to preserve and the Doge team trying to preserve?
So first of all, Mike, McDonald, and Adam had a view of what should be kept and what should be cut.
Their view initially was that papers relating to George Washington, John Adams, et cetera, were important enough to keep.
That's not to say that every grant related to the founding of the country and every grant relating to the American Revolution fell into that bucket.
Those are ones that they specifically flag as important enough to keep.
In addition to that, there was an entire bucket around the America 250 Initiative, the Garden of Heroes Museum, that were in addition to the ones I just mentioned, there were probably 30 or so that I think your colleague flagged before.
So that's not to say we were to keep every single grant related to the founding of the country.
There were just some that they advised that they wanted to keep.
So.
Okay.
So it sounds like there was some type of priority reserved for grants that had to do with the founding, as opposed to grants that did not have anything to do with the founding of the country.
That's, I think, generally right.
Okay, great.
And the grant that I just read had something to do with the founding of the country, and it was terminated, in your view, why?
You left Justin.
I actually don't know.
Okay.
There was a grant about a German theologian that was kept had very little to do with the founding of the country.
Why do you imagine a grant like that would be kept?
Can you read the description of the grant, please?
I don't have the description in front of me, but...
Well, I can't comment on it unless I have the full context.
Okay.
But is there a reason that a German theologian would be a grant about a German theologian would be kept?
I need more context on the grant, to be honest, but on the surface, I've said, my gut says we should have cut that one too.
All right, I have the description in front of me.
I'll read it for you really quickly and then we can.
Great.
The description is preparation for print publication of an English translation of volumes four, five, and six of the lectures and shorter works of the German theologian Karl Barth from 1886 to 1968.
Yeah, we definitely should have cut that one.
I don't know why it was missed.
You'll have to ask Justin.
Can I ask what is this document?
I'm reading the description of a grant.
In what document?
It's in all of the documents that have the grant description of the NEC.
Give me a base number of a document?
It would be in the documents.
I'm not reading it from a document that we've exhibited.
I don't think I need to.
And the grants that we've seen and the documents that we've seen have the grants that are being referenced.
Well, but some of those are, you know, not the final list.
So I'm just trying to understand because you keep making representations about what grants were and were not terminated, and we don't have any way of knowing whether you're working from the right list because you're not telling us what you're reading from.
And that's all right.
And again, I would imagine that this is a speaking objection.
It's not an objection.
I'm asking you.
I mean.
I just don't.
I just don't have.
Okay.
Okay, I don't have.
Yes, we don't know what you're reading from.
Okay.
Okay.
You don't know what you're reading from.
Well, I do know that I'm reading from.
You won't tell us.
Okay.
I know that we have documents that have the grant descriptions in them that we've already displayed.
And it's from these documents that these grants have been.
I'll tell you if there's a final list of grants, and that's the final list of grants and it was kept, my reaction is that it should have also been cut.
And you should ask Justin as to why it was kept.
might have been an oversight.
Do you think that it's an issue that there might have been oversights in your work at the NIH?
I'd like to see the final list of grants that have been kept versus cut to confirm that what you're reading from is actually on the final list.
Do I think it's acceptable there oversights?
No I don't.
I think that's all I have.
I have a few questions.
Mr. Kavanaugh, you were asked some questions earlier about occasions that we have met or spoken, right?
Yes.
And you noted that we met yesterday in person, right?
Yes.
Can you at least not cut me off?
We had spoken before on the phone a few times before that.
Objection leading.
That's right, yes.
When we met, did I tell you that it's important to tell the truth?
Yes.
Other than telling the truth and being aware of privilege, did I suggest what you should say or shouldn't say?
Objection leading.
You testified earlier that agency heads had to sign off on grant terminations, right?
Yes.
Did you believe that you had the authority to terminate grants if the agency did not sign off?
Objection shouldn't leading.
No.
In the case of NEH, did Michael McDonald in fact sign off on the grant terminations?
Yes, objection leading.
You testified earlier about Steve Davis.
You all know that?
And you testified that he had suggested that you go to NEH to meet with Michael McDonald.
Yes.
Objection.
Objection leading.
After that point, what, if any, involvement did Steve Davis have with respect to NEH?
Objection leading, Lax Foundation, forum.
You can just say objection to forum.
Thank you.
And it's not leading if it says, if any involvement, how is that leading?
I appreciate that.
Thank you, Councilman.
No, he had no involvement.
Did you ever discuss with him which specific grants to terminate at NEH?
No, did you ever discuss with him the criteria to use in deciding which grants to terminate?
No objection.
We looked earlier at some scorecards that you would send him on a weekly basis.
Do you remember that?
Yes.
And what kind of information was in those scorecards?
The total value of the contracts that were terminated, grants that were terminated, and personnel that were at the agency at the start of the administration, January 20th, and then how many employees remained as of the latest scorecard.
Other than those updates, did you provide him other updates that related to NEH?
No.
Did you ever have any substantive discussions with him about any HBS signal?
No.
And you testified a bit earlier about Jason Aminetti.
Do you remember that?
Yes.
Who is Jason Aminetti?
Justin Aminetti.
Sorry, Justin Aminetti.
Justin Aminetti was an attorney at the U.S. Dodge Service and provided us with legal counsel throughout all of our work with the small agencies to the extent that he was on our team.
Without going into detail about the substance of any particular communications, what kinds of communications did you have with Mr. Aminetti?
Primarily around whether an action we were about to take with the agency head was appropriate, either by statute or form or otherwise.
Anything that Justin and I felt like we weren't equipped to perform on our own and wanted basically a lawyer's opinion on our actions.
Deposition Conclusion and Transcript00:02:24
Did you consult with anyone other than Justin Fox, Michael McDonald, and others from NEH in determining which grants to recommend for termination at NEH?
No, it would have been myself, Justin Fox, Mike McDonald, and Adam.
And you mentioned that there were two criteria that you looked at in flagging grants for termination, is that right?
Yes.
And what were those?
The first bucket was any grants that violated an outstanding executive order, including those related to DEI.
And the other bucket was our initial judgment of wasteful spending in the context of trying to reduce the federal deficit, which were presented to them for basically review and ultimately agreement.
Did you ever hide the reasons that you were selecting particular grants for termination?
Objection to form.
No.
No further questions.
I just want to note on the record that there were some documents that were looked at that were subject to the protective order, and the questions relating to those documents are also subject to the protective order.
Before we do off the record, I just need to ask for video purposes if anybody would like to be ordering a video at this time.
If you don't know at this time, you'd like to term LAD, you can always reach out to Alexitas at a later date, but I just try to make everybody's lives a little bit easier if you want to just order it now.
So I'll start on the side of the table if anybody wants to order a video.
I think we're I think we're good for now, but I appreciate that.
We'll need to check with our team and get back to you.
Sure.
Certainly.
Yeah, I'll we'll order it later.
I'll say.
Would you like to order a copy of the transcript?
I'm going to follow up about that.
Somebody has a standing order I know.
Yeah, we'd like a rough transcript expedited and then everything else in the standing order.