Trump Administration admits two DOGE employees may have misused Social Security data
(NBC, KYMA) - The Trump Administration has admitted that the two Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees may have misused data obtained from the Social Security Administration (SSA).
The Justice Department (DOJ) has told a judge that an unnamed political advocacy group contacted DOGE staffers in a bid to gain access to state voter rolls.
In a court filing in Maryland last Friday, officials said SSA representatives told them a recent review found that in March, after a temporary restraining order by the Maryland judge blocking DOGE's access to SSA went into effect, an unnamed political advocacy group contacted two members of the DOGE team "with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired."
According to the DOJ, the advocacy group's stated aim, was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain states."
This news was first reported by Politico.
The DOGE also said one of the two DOGE team members signed a "Voter Data Agreement" with the advocacy group on March 24, four days after the temporary restraining order was issued.
This agreement was not reviewed or approved through the agency's data exchange procedures," the filing said.
However, the DOJ said it was unclear whether any personal information was actually given to the political group.
DOGE, which was created by President Donald Trump and headed up by Elon Musk, ended its operations in November, the same month SSA representatives first told the DOJ about this situation during an unrelated review.
A whistleblower report filed in August accused DOGE staffers of mishandling Social Security data by putting millions of people's data "in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight."
In Friday's filing, the DOJ acknowledged that some data was not handled properly, saying members of the DOGE team used links to share data through a third-party server called Cloudflare, which is not approved for storing SSA data.
