WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday provided an answer to a weeks-old mystery — who is actually running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — but is immediately facing new questions about the apparent obfuscation of the precise role of billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk.

After pointed grilling by federal judges who have seemed incredulous that no one in Donald Trump’s administration could provide the name of DOGE’s administrator, the White House told news outlets that it was Amy Gleason, a nurse-turned-technology expert who was once honored by former President Barack Obama and who then worked in Trump’s White House during his first term and also in the first year of President Joe Biden’s term.

“Raises more questions than answers,” said Norm Eisen, the lawyer representing USAID employees in a federal lawsuit that challenges DOGE’s legal ability to cancel government contracts, lay off workers and even eliminate agencies, all of which Musk has boasted of doing.

Gleason, on the other hand, has barely drawn attention at all since Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20. Her LinkedIn page shows that she rejoined the White House last month in the United States Digital Service, or USDS, as a “senior adviser” and that she had worked there from 2018 through 2021 as a “digital services expert.”

In 2015, Obama highlighted Gleason as a “Champion of Change” for her work in “precision medicine,” applying technology to health care.

She did not respond to HuffPost queries Tuesday. However, other news reports said she is currently vacationing in Mexico.

USDS, which was created by Obama to bring in technical expertise to help solve glitches with the Affordable Care Act website when it was first launched, remained in place within the White House. It was renamed the “Department of Government Efficiency” by Trump in an executive order the day he took office.

And it’s that history, Eisen and other legal experts say, that makes DOGE’s actions unconstitutional under the appointments clause, which reserves Musk’s level of authority to presidential appointees who have been confirmed to their jobs by the U.S. Senate.

Musk has not been confirmed by the Senate, and it appears that Gleason — who was appointed administrator in an “acting” capacity — has not either.

In any event, Trump himself has repeatedly said that he put Musk “in charge” of DOGE even as his aides have refused for weeks to say who the office’s administrator was. Justice Department lawyers similarly told judges that they did not know the identity of that person.

Lawyers say the reason administration officials refuse to admit that Musk is the de facto DOGE administrator is simple: To do so would guarantee losing those lawsuits filed in recent weeks that challenge DOGE’s authority.

“What Elon Musk is doing is basically acting like the chief operating officer of the United States,” said George Conway, a prominent Trump critic and lawyer who has argued from the day DOGE was created that it lacked the legal ability to do anything other than offer Trump recommendations.

“What they’re doing is blatantly illegal,” Conway added.

Musk, whose financial disclosure statement is being kept secret by the White House, is scheduled to attend Trump’s first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. His latest action was to inform every federal employee that they had to respond to an email with five things they had done in their job in the previous week. Failure to respond, he wrote on social media, would be considered resignation.

A number of agency heads subsequently instructed their employees not to comply with Musk’s demand. But Trump on Tuesday told reporters that he thought Musk’s idea was sound. “It is somewhat voluntary, but also if you don’t answer, I guess you get fired,” he said.