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department of government efficiency
Criminal Investigation Demanded for DOGE Theft of Social Security Data
"This week’s revelations are just the tip of the iceberg," said the executive director of Social Security Works. "We need to know exactly who has our data and what they are doing with it."
Jan 21, 2026
Advocates and Democratic members of Congress are calling for a criminal investigation after a court filing revealed that operatives at the Department of Government Efficiency—previously headed by Elon Musk—pilfered and leaked Social Security data through a non-secure private server.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said Wednesday that his organization supports Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Richard Neal (D-Mass.) in their call for "a full criminal investigation into DOGE leaks of private Social Security data to Elon Musk’s associates and immediate congressional action to safeguard Americans’ privacy."
"This reported malfeasance was enabled by a culture created by the Trump administration, Elon Musk, and DOGE soon after the president took office—a culture of recklessly interfering in the legitimate functions of the federal government with questionable intent and zero accountability," said Richtman, calling the data abuses part of a "relentless attack on the functioning of the Social Security Administration."
Richtman's statement came a day after the Trump administration acknowledged that DOGE operatives accessed and divulged highly sensitive Social Security data in ways that "were potentially outside of" SSA policy and in violation of a March 2025 court order. The Justice Department maintains that SSA doesn't know data was shared on the third-party server.
As the New York Times reported, the Trump DOJ also disclosed that "a political advocacy group contacted two members of the DOGE Social Security team, asking for an analysis of state voter rolls the advocacy group obtained."
"One of the DOGE employees signed an agreement with the advocacy group, which the Social Security Administration appeared to learn through a review of emails," the Times noted. "The Justice Department did not provide details about what came of the agreement and whether sensitive data was shared inappropriately."
In a joint statement responding to the revelations, Larson and Neal said that "we have been warning about privacy violations at Social Security and calling out Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ for months."
"DOGE signed an agreement to share Social Security data with an organization trying to undermine state election results, sent 1,000 Americans’ personal records directly to one of Elon Musk’s top consiglieres, and shared the confidential data of Americans on a private server," the Democratic lawmakers continued. "The 'DOGE' appointees engaged in this scheme—who were never brought before Congress for approval or even publicly identified—must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for these abhorrent violations of the public trust."
Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, echoed that call on Wednesday, saying that "those who have committed illegal acts must be prosecuted."
Lawson also demanded that Congress launch "a long-overdue investigation into just what DOGE is doing with our earned benefits and our private data."
"Thanks to Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, Elon Musk’s DOGE minions have access to our private Social Security data. So does anyone they choose to share it with—and anyone who can hack the unsecured server they’ve stored it on," said Lawson. "This week’s revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. We need to know exactly who has our data and what they are doing with it."
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DOGE Employees May Have Improperly Accessed Social Security Data With Aim to 'Overturn Election Results'
The DOJ filing also appeared to corroborate claims that DOGE employees improperly tried to make "a live copy of the country’s Social Security information" on a third-party cloud platform.
Jan 20, 2026
The US Department of Justice acknowledged last week that two members of the Department of Government Efficiency may have improperly accessed Social Security data at the request of an unidentified organization whose goal is challenging US election results.
In a court filing dated January 16, the DOJ revealed that the unidentified organization last March reached out to two DOGE employees, who were working at the Social Security Administration (SSA), and requested that they "analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired."
"The advocacy group’s stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain states," the DOJ wrote. "In connection with these communications, one of the DOGE team members signed a 'Voter Data Agreement,' in his capacity as an SSA employee, with the advocacy group."
The filing said that SSA has "not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group," but that it had reviewed emails indicating that "DOGE team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls."
The DOJ also revealed that the SSA in December 2025 made referrals of the two DOGE employees to the US Office of Special Counsel for possible violations of the Hatch Act, which bars federal government employees from using their positions for political purposes.
Politico, which first reported on the DOJ filing, noted that the disclosure "came as part of a list of 'corrections' to testimony by top SSA officials during last year’s legal battles over DOGE’s access to Social Security data," and also included revelations that "DOGE team members shared data on unapproved 'third-party' servers and may have accessed private information that had been ruled off-limits by a court at the time."
The admission that DOGE employees shared data on a third-party server bolsters an explosive whistleblower complaint filed in August from former SSA chief data officer Charles Borges, who alleged that DOGE officials have been responsible for “serious data security lapses” that “risk the security of over 300 million Americans’ Social Security data.”
At the heart of Borges’ complaint was an effort by DOGE employees to make “a live copy of the country’s Social Security information in a cloud environment” that “apparently lacks any security oversight from SSA or tracking to determine who is accessing or has accessed the copy of this data.”
Should hackers gain access to this copy of Social Security data, the Borges complaint warned, it could result in identity theft on an unprecedented scale and lead to the loss of crucial food and healthcare benefits for millions of Americans. In a worst-case scenario, the complaint said, the government may also have to give every American a new Social Security number “at great cost.”
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Democracy Watchdog Exposes 'Heartbreaking Catalog of DOGE's Depredations'
"Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on the federal government will have long-standing effects on the American public," said the group's research director.
Jan 20, 2026
Exactly a year after President Donald Trump returned to office and swiftly signed an executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency, the Revolving Door Project on Tuesday released a report detailing all the damage that DOGE has done.
"Under the banner of the so-called 'Department of Government Efficiency' (DOGE), Elon Musk and Russell Vought have eagerly shred political, professional, and legal precedent in their effort to dismantle the essential functions of the federal government—and most importantly, democracy at large," says the report, DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine.
In addition to being the richest person on Earth, Musk was DOGE's de facto leader until he left the administration at the end of May, on bad terms with Trump—a falling out addressed in the report. Meanwhile, Project 2025 architect Vought remains both director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
CFPB is among the 20 "agencies targeted by DOGE" that have their own sections in the report. Each section features a timeline of attacks, outlines impacts on capacity and material harms, and lists notable names of ousted leadership and DOGE agents.
"We hope that this report will show the public how dangerous a madman Elon Musk is, and why corrupt billionaires, with zero experience in governance, have no place making decisions for career officials."
"After Musk's exit, DOGE, filled with his lackeys, remained a feature in the federal government," the report states. "In fact, the guiding principles of DOGE—traumatizing federal workers, decimating government capacity, and slashing funding for people and places in need—were rejuvenated, albeit with a new, more effective and more discreet standard bearer."
Vought, the publication explains, "began firming up DOGE's legacy behind the scenes, using the power of his office to embed DOGE personnel in federal agencies as full time staff and institutionalize funding cuts through illegal use of the Impoundment Control Act."
Elon Musk may have left government, but DOGE's guiding principles still remain under the guidance of OMB Director Russel Vought. If anything, Vought will carry out the decimation of government capacity with an efficiency and ideological ruthlessness that Musk never possessed.
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— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoordc.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 11:23 AM
As OMB director, "Vought can review and reshape federal budget proposals according to his own ideological priorities, even if the agency leaders disagree," the document notes. "A supposed hyper-originalist and self-described Christian nationalist, Vought has used this leverage to reshape the federal government from the top down."
"The CFPB was a prime example of Vought’s vision of dismantling federal agencies that do not serve his interest," the report highlights, pointing to attack on personnel, agency funding, abandonment of key cases, and related legal battles. "The CFPB saga serves as a template of things to come with Vought at the helm of the DOGE mission."
Other targeted federal agencies include the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, General Services Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Office of Personnel Management, United States Agency for International Development, US Institute of Peace, and US Postal Service.
As the report lays out, DOGE has also gone after the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.
Our report breaks down DOGE’s activity at individual agencies in narrative order with timelines of the incursions, DOGE’s impact on workforce capacity, the material harms that DOGE’s cuts generated, and the names of ousted agency leadership.
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— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoordc.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 11:23 AM
"DOGE agents—a cohort of unelected, unqualified, and unaccountable goons recruited from Elon Musk and Peter Thiel's orbit—have been given unfettered access to the internal machinery of federal agencies," the report says, naming another Big Tech billionaire. "From seizing control of the nation's payment system at the Treasury Department to orchestrating mass purges of the experts who ensure our food is safe, these actors bypassed traditional oversight to strip agencies of their ability to serve the American public."
Revolving Door Project deputy research director Christopher Lewis warned in a Tuesday statement that "Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s attacks on the federal government will have long-standing effects on the American public. From the cuts to the National Weather Service to the axing of fraud agents at the Federal Student Aid Office, every single American has and will continue to feel the effects of this administration's illegal and corrupt actions."
"We hope that this report will show the public how dangerous a madman Elon Musk is, and why corrupt billionaires, with zero experience in governance, have no place making decisions for career officials," he continued. "Our feckless Congress, especially Trump's enablers on the Hill, should be ashamed of themselves and what they have wrought."
"Our feckless Congress, especially Trump's enablers on the Hill, should be ashamed of themselves and what they have wrought."
Various recent analyses have exposed how US billionaires have benefited from Trump's second term and the Republican-controlled Congress while working-class Americans face an intensifying affordability crisis, struggling to afford everything from rent and groceries to soaring health insurance premiums.
"If anyone needed evidence that getting rich doesn't require brains or judgment, or that the private sector's supposed superiority over public servants was a myth, this heartbreaking catalog of DOGE's depredations should more than suffice," said Revolving Door Project executive director Jeff Hauser.
"The main lesson to be learned from Musk and DOGE," he added, "is that the next administration should pay careful attention to what DOGE did and proceed to do the exact opposite."
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