The Department of Justice has disclosed that staff members within Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team at the Social Security Administration secretly communicated with a right-wing advocacy group actively working to "overturn election results." This revelation emerges from court filings in an ongoing lawsuit targeting DOGE's controversial operations inside the federal agency.
Voter Data Agreement Signed by DOGE Staffer
According to the Justice Department's submission, at least one DOGE employee signed a formal "voter data agreement" with the unnamed activist group in March 2025. The document was delivered directly to the organisation, whose stated objective was to uncover evidence of alleged voter fraud and subsequently challenge election outcomes in specific states. While it remains unclear whether any actual Social Security data was transferred, internal emails strongly suggest DOGE team members were potentially asked to assist the group by accessing agency records to match against state voter registration databases.
Hatch Act Violations and Security Breaches
Both implicated staffers have been referred to the Justice Department for potential violations of the Hatch Act, the federal statute that broadly prohibits political activities by government employees. Neither individual has been publicly identified in the court documents. The filing further reveals that DOGE personnel utilised unapproved third-party servers, specifically Cloudflare, to share data. Agency officials have confirmed they cannot determine precisely what information was shared or whether it still resides on those servers, creating significant security concerns.
Elizabeth Shapiro, a Justice Department official, noted in the filing that while the agency maintains DOGE "never had access" to Social Security's primary systems, some restricted data derived from those systems was indeed shared with Steve Davis, a senior adviser to Musk's team. An email from March 2025 included a password-protected file containing private information belonging to approximately 1,000 individuals. Shapiro stated, "It is unknown at this time whether any private information was accessed."
Background of the DOGE Initiative and Legal Challenges
The Department of Government Efficiency, originally repurposed by the Trump administration from the U.S. Government Service, was deployed across federal agencies with the mission to identify "waste, fraud, and abuse." Elon Musk, who has publicly labelled Social Security a "Ponzi scheme," led this initiative which specifically targeted the nation's largest retirement programme. The operation has faced substantial legal opposition from the outset.
Two major labour unions and an advocacy group filed suit to block DOGE's access to highly sensitive personal information, including tax records, Social Security numbers, and banking details. Their case alleges illegal access to data to support politically motivated fraud allegations, echoing former President Donald Trump's baseless claims about deceased individuals receiving benefits. The lawsuit gained momentum following a Supreme Court decision six months ago that temporarily permitted DOGE to access Social Security data while awaiting a federal appeals court ruling.
Whistleblower Allegations and Data Security Risks
The Justice Department's latest disclosure follows alarming whistleblower testimony from Charles Borges, the Social Security Administration's former chief data officer. Borges alleged that a DOGE team uploaded a copy of agency data containing addresses, birth dates, and other sensitive information for virtually every American to a vulnerable cloud server. His statement warns that this action placed millions of Americans' personal information at serious risk of being leaked or hacked, with no independent security or oversight measures in place.
These allegations reinforce prior warnings from government watchdog groups and ongoing lawsuits that have attempted to restrain what they describe as the Musk-founded group of young engineers from causing disruption across federal agencies. The sequence of events described in the documents bears notable similarity to public appeals made by the organisation True the Vote, which has urged DOGE to investigate voter registration systems nationwide. When contacted for comment, True the Vote did not immediately respond.
