A Manhattan judge ordered Friday that video depositions of two ex DOGE employees be removed from the Internet after the footage went viral, exposing the men to widespread ridicule.
Judge Colleen McMahon’s decision followed a government emergency filing Friday, which claimed academic groups — including the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and American Historical Association (AHA) — suing to restore grant cuts made under Elon Musk’s DOGE had wrongly posted the deposition footage online.
According to the New York Times, the government cited the harassment (including death threats) of witness and former DOGE employee Justin Fox as a reason for the removal, prompting the judge to order the plaintiffs to “take any and all possible steps to claw back” the videos.
While the aforementioned groups reportedly asked JudgeMcMahon to reconsider her decision, she responded, “DENIED. See you Tuesday,” referring to the upcoming hearing on the matter. The videos have since disappeared from YouTube.
Fox, along with fellow ex DOGE employee Nate Cavanaugh, found themselves targets for Internet commentary after the groups posted nearly 25 hours of deposition footage from the case and the New York Times picked up on the testimonies. Before long, clips from the depositions began to spread on social media, drawing ridicule for Fox and Cavanaugh.
Fox especially became the subject of extensive roasting online after a clip of him struggling to define DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) made the rounds on social media and media outlets.
“Yeah, my understanding was exactly what was written in the [Executive Order],” Fox said at the time. “Any time that we would look at a grant through the lens of complying with an executive order, we would just refer back to the EO and assess if this grant had relation to it.”
He was later asked to apply his understanding of DEI to certain projects that saw their funding impacted, including a documentary centering on female Holocaust survivors.
When you build a machine to target people based on gender, race, or any other identity, it ends up targeting Jews too.
— The Nexus Project (@NexusProjectUS) March 10, 2026
New deposition testimony shows a DOGE staffer flagged a Holocaust documentary for termination. The film told the story of Jewish women forced into slave labor… pic.twitter.com/Yf5kRZD1od
He responded: “It’s the gender-based story; that’s inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group … It’s focusing on DEI principles, gender being one of them… specifically focused on Jewish cultures and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture.”
While the depositions have been taken down from YouTube, many of the clips are still circulating on X. It’s unclear if the social media site will be taking steps to also remove the content.
