By Matt Durr
mlive.com
(TNS)
Jan. 21 — The Justice Department has confirmed that sensitive Social Security data was improperly stored by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Additionally, two members of the team agreed to help an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states.”
In court documents filed Jan. 16, Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said that the Social Security Administration referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, according to Politico. The Hatch Act prevents government employees from using their position for political purposes.
“Email communications reviewed by SSA suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls, but SSA has not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group,” a portion of the filing reads.
While it’s unclear if any data was shared with the advocacy group, one of the DOGE members signed an agreement to assist the group, the Justice Department reported.
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The revelation appears to contradict previous claims made by the SSA and President Donald Trump’s administration that said DOGE accessed the Social Security data in order to “detect fraud, waste and abuse.”
“SSA believed those statements to be accurate at the time they were made, and they are largely still accurate,” Shapiro wrote. “At this time, there is no evidence that SSA employees outside of the involved members of the DOGE Team were aware of the communications with the advocacy group. Nor were they aware of the ‘Voter Data Agreement.’”
The Justice Department did not publicly name the DOGE members or the advocacy group that sought their help.
The Justice Department also revealed that a DOGE member shared Social Security data on Cloudflare, an unauthorized third-party server. The department does not know what data was on the server, or whether the data still exists on the server, according to CNN.
Last year, Charles Borges, who had served as Social Security’s chief data officer, filed a whistleblower complaint claiming DOGE employees put the records of more than 300 million Americans in a vulnerable cloud computing server. That database contained names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, citizenship status, parents’ names and other personal information.
Shortly after filing the complaint, Borges was forced to resign.
DOGE was formed last year by President Trump via executive order. Billionaire Elon Musk was given control over the agency and ordered by Trump to begin modernizing “Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
Musk and the team slashed through the budgets of government agencies, cancelled government contracts, and issued directives to cut staff throughout the government. Musk left the agency in May 2025.
While campaigning for Trump in 2024, Musk claimed that he could save the government $2 trillion in wasteful spending, however he eventually backtracked on that claim. As of Jan. 21, 2026, the DOGE website estimates $215 billion in savings.
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©2026 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit mlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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