Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is likely to be given office space in the West Wing, putting him close to President Trump as Mr. Musk steers a project that aims to cut as much as $2 trillion in government spending, two people with knowledge of the planning said on Monday.
Mr. Musk had been expected to be situated in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is in the White House complex but not in the West Wing proper. But he has for many days been asking about his level of access, signaling a desire for proximity to Mr. Trump, according to the people.
Mr. Trump had wanted Mr. Musk to have the space, one of the people said. Mr. Musk has been given a badge for the White House complex and was said to be working there on Monday. He has filled out paperwork to be brought onboard for the role and already has a government email address.
Trump officials and an official with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting project that Mr. Musk leads, did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Musk spent time on Sunday at the Washington headquarters of his rocket company, SpaceX, before speaking at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Monday. His government-cutting team has largely spent the past two months at the company’s downtown offices, joined by a number of engineers who hail from Silicon Valley and are planning to be dispersed across the federal government, with a goal of placing about two people at each major agency.
At least some of these employees carry navy blue mesh baseball caps in all-white capital letters reading “DOGE,” as Mr. Musk’s project is informally known.
Many aspects related to Mr. Musk’s efforts have been shrouded in secrecy. It remains unclear whether he is going to become a “special government employee” for his project to recommend dramatic cuts to federal programs. The Department of Government Efficiency is not an official department.
His allies have been considering his options over the last several weeks, with an eye on making sure that he is minimally restricted by ethics laws. The question of Mr. Musk’s formal status carries legal ramifications because different rules apply when government work is performed by private citizens or by officials.
The different legal categories include conflict-of-interest restrictions for government employees that could be significant since Mr. Musk’s companies have billions of dollars in government contracts, and requirements about when deliberations may be kept confidential or must be performed in public view that could affect the rollout and reaction to his proposed cuts.
Mr. Musk has already played a major role in placing personnel throughout the federal government, including in areas that overlap with his businesses. His allies have been interviewing candidates for senior jobs at agencies including the Pentagon and State Department. And Mr. Musk has weighed in personally on key roles. He successfully pushed for Troy Meink to be chosen as secretary of the Air Force, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation.
Mr. Meink ran the Pentagon’s National Reconnaissance Office, which helped Mr. Musk secure a multibillion-dollar contract for SpaceX to help build and deploy a spy satellite network for the federal government.
A priority for Mr. Musk has been avoiding triggering a law that requires advisory committees that include private citizens to conduct their work in public view. Becoming a special government employee could be a step toward doing that.
While special government employees must fill out financial disclosure forms, that status comes with more flexible rules than what is required of regular officials. In particular, Mr. Musk, one of Mr. Trump’s top financial supporters, could avoid any public release of such information if he took no salary.
A federal ethics law aimed at preventing conflicts of interest generally makes it a crime for any government employees, including special temporary ones, to participate in official matters in which they, their families or their organizations have a financial interest.
SpaceX has contracts with the government to send astronauts and satellites into space. Mr. Musk’s Tesla electric car company is affected by government policies like subsidies to encourage more production of batteries and chargers inside the United States and to make it easier for consumers to buy such vehicles.
Under the ethics law’s terms, however, Mr. Trump could exempt Mr. Musk from that limit by granting him a written waiver.
Despite the restrictions that come with official status, if not only Mr. Musk but all of his staff members on the project become regular or special government employees, the effort could avoid triggering other legal issues. Many recruits for the cost-cutting project are expected to be formal members of existing departments, not special government employees.
In particular, the project might be able to avoid the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which regulates boards, panels, councils and other types of committees that work with people from outside the government to provide advice to the executive branch.
That law says that all meetings of such committees are to be conducted in public, and all the documents submitted to such a panel or produced by it are also supposed to be available to the public.
