Trump administration admits DOGE may have misused Americans’ Social Security data

Two members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whitethorn person accessed and shared Social Security numbers successful an effort to assistance an advocacy radical “overturn predetermination results successful definite States” past year, according to tribunal documents. 

The revelation, which was archetypal reported by Politico, comes arsenic portion of a bid of corrections to erstwhile grounds by apical Social Security Administration officials related to ineligible battles implicit DOGE’s entree to Social Security data. 

Neither the 2 DOGE members, nor the advocacy group, are named successful the tribunal documents.

In March 2025, a governmental advocacy radical contacted 2 members of the DOGE squad astatine the Social Security Administration (SSA) “with a petition to analyse authorities elector rolls that the advocacy radical had acquired,” said Elizabeth Shapiro, a Justice Department official, wrote successful the tribunal documents. 

“The advocacy group’s stated purpose was to find grounds of elector fraud and to overturn predetermination results successful definite States,” said Shapiro.

Shapiro wrote that aft these communications, 1 of the DOGE members, arsenic an SSA employee, signed and sent a “Voter Data Agreement” with the advocacy group. 

The DOGE members whitethorn person accessed backstage accusation that was ruled to beryllium off-limits by a tribunal astatine the time, and shared information connected unapproved “third-party” servers. 

“At this time, determination is nary grounds that SSA employees extracurricular of the progressive members of the DOGE Team were alert of the communications with the advocacy group. Nor were they alert of the ‘Voter Data Agreement’,” Shapiro wrote.

It’s unclear if the 2 DOGE members ended up sharing the data, according to Shapiro, but emails “suggest that DOGE Team members could person been asked to assistance the advocacy radical by accessing SSA information to lucifer to the elector rolls.” 

According to Shapiro, the SSA referred the 2 DOGE employees for imaginable violations of the Hatch Act, a instrumentality that prohibits national workers from leveraging their authoritative positions for governmental activities. 

Last year, a national justice issued an order to artifact DOGe’s members entree to SSA’s systems, which included SSNs, aesculapian records, drivers’ licence numbers, taxation information, and different types of idiosyncratic information. Later on, a SSA whistleblower alleged that DOGE uploaded hundreds of millions of Social Security records to a susceptible unreality server.