A federal judge is allowing the release of deposition videos of two former DOGE staffers, ruling that the risk of “embarrassment and reputational harm” is not enough to overcome the public interest in the videos.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Monday lifted an earlier order requiring a group of nonprofits to remove the videos from the internet after lawyers with the Justice Department argued that the former DOGE staffers faced threats because of the depositions’ release.

While Judge McMahon acknowledged that the former staffers faced threats, she said the DOJ could not prove a “particularized harm” to the former staffers that would overcome the public interest in their official conduct as government employees.

  • CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    I hope these videos follow them for the rest of their lives. Especially that bit where Justin Fox called a holocaust documentary “inheritly discriminatory” because it focused on “females” and “Jewish people”. 54:10 in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TZheRo273ns

    Oh, and the part where he said that a documentary about an anti-black massacre is DEI and “not to the benefit of human kind because it focuses on a specific race, here being black” (and therefore the grant should be terminated). 28:11 in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qtFdVtBb75s

    Of course, there’s more, like allowing ChatGPT to hallucinate and incorrectly mark grants as DEI, and then basically just having it do his entire “job”. He couldn’t even define what DEI is, and constantly said “I’ll have to refer to the EO.” He seemed to just slap the entire EO and grant list into the slop generator and accept whatever the output was, and then sent the slop up the chain.

    Remember, Justin Fox is a racist, antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic piece of shit that couldn’t even do his basic, yet high paying job correctly. Because of Justin Fox, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, and people have died because of him. He also failed to make any sort of dent in the ever-growing deficit, so it was all for nothing. Justin Fox is a terrible person and employee, and no company should waste their time with hiring him in the future.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Um, were those other videos actually deleted?

    Also, it’s not like this is revenge porn or something. These are depositions paid for by us taxpayers, of people paid by us to supposedly do their “work”. Under what possible pretext should we not have access to them?

    • Revolver1864@piefed.social
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      2 days ago

      The pretext it made them look REALLY fucken bad, people were (rightfully) very angry at their actions and were redressing their (former) employees in the form of threatening to end them lol.

      I watched 2 of them and there were a lot of “holy shit” moments.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yeah, both of them looked like they were glitching the fuck out.

        Getting real questions that didn’t just pander to them. Something tells me they are used to being coddled all of their lives.

      • 8oow3291d@feddit.dk
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        2 days ago

        But seriously, what were the arguments given? Inconvenient objective reality is surely not a permitted reason, as you say.

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    2 days ago

    “embarrassment and reputational harm” why is this even a valid argument. We can’t show the bad way we run things as it would embarrass us and harm are reputation by making it accurate.

          • CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone
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            2 days ago

            I hope these videos follow them for the rest of their lives. Especially that bit where Justin Fox called a holocaust documentary “inheritly discriminatory” because it focused on “females” and “Jewish people”. 54:10 in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TZheRo273ns

            Oh, and the part where he said that a documentary about an anti-black massacre is DEI and “not to the benefit of human kind because it focuses on a specific race, here being black” (and therefore the grant should be terminated). 28:11 in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qtFdVtBb75s

            Of course, there’s more, like allowing ChatGPT to hallucinate and incorrectly mark grants as DEI, and then basically just having it do his entire “job”. He couldn’t even define what DEI is, and constantly said “I’ll have to refer to the EO.” He seemed to just slap the entire EO and grant list into the slop generator and accept whatever the output was, and then sent the slop up the chain.

            Remember, Justin Fox is a racist, antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic piece of shit that couldn’t even do his basic, yet high paying job correctly. Because of Justin Fox, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, and people have died because of him. He also failed to make any sort of dent in the ever-growing deficit, so it was all for nothing. Justin Fox is a terrible person and employee, and no company should waste their time with hiring him in the future.

        • NekoKoneko@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Not sure why. I just tried them and they work both in the US and via a Sweden VPN. I’m not sure if they’re geolocked, but I can view them.