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DOGE Employees Deal to Overturn Elections Using Social Security Data · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  The Trump administration admitted in a court filing that
• 0:03
  two DOGE employees communicated with a political advocacy group
• 0:08
  seeking to overturn election results using Social Security
• 0:12
  data. The Justice Department revealed
• 0:14
  that one employee signed a voter data agreement with the unnamed
• 0:18
  group four days after a federal judge blocked DOGE for accessing
• 0:23
  sensitive records. Now the information set
• 0:26
  undiscovered for eight months until an unrelated SSA review in
• 0:30
  November surfaced those communications.
• 0:33
  Now, Did Elon Musk's efficiency operation quietly convert
• 0:37
  America's most sensitive database into a political
• 0:41
  weapon? Now, the signed agreement may
• 0:43
  have involve matching Social Security data to state voter
• 0:47
  rolls. The unnamed advocacy group never
• 0:50
  received approval through S S as official data exchange
• 0:53
  procedures. We're going to cover how this
• 0:55
  happened under an active court order.
• 0:58
  The whistleblower who warned about data invulnerabilities
• 1:01
  months earlier, the Cloudflare server problem that left SSA
• 1:05
  unable to track what was shared and what the Hatch Act referrals
• 1:09
  actually mean for the two unnamed employees.
• 1:14
  Now, the Justice Department disclosed these facts in a
• 1:16
  Friday court filing, making a formal correction to previously
• 1:21
  testimony by top SSA officials. Senior DOJ official Elizabeth
• 1:25
  Shapiro wrote that in March 2025, a political advocacy group
• 1:30
  contacted 2 members of s s as Doge Team with a request to
• 1:35
  analyze state voter rolls the group had acquired.
• 1:39
  The group's stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and
• 1:42
  to overturn election results in certain states.
• 1:45
  Shapiro said that the filing was meant to ensure full candor to
• 1:49
  the court, though the disclosure comes nearly a year after the
• 1:52
  alleged conduct occurred. Now the sequence of events
• 1:55
  reveals A troubling timeline. US District Court Ellen
• 1:59
  Hollander said a temporary restraining order on March 20th,
• 2:03
  2025, blocking DOGE from accessing sensitive,
• 2:06
  confidential and personally identifiable information at SSA.
• 2:12
  Four days later, on March 24th, one of the DOGE employees signed
• 2:16
  and sent a voter data agreement to the political advocacy group.
• 2:19
  That agreement was never reviewed or approved through s s
• 2:23
  as data exchange procedures. The agency claims no employees
• 2:26
  outside the DOGE team knew about the communications or the
• 2:30
  agreement until November of 2025, when an unrelated internal
• 2:34
  review uncovered them. Now, Judge Hollander had been
• 2:38
  clear about her concerns when she issued the restraining
• 2:40
  order. She wrote that the DOGE team was
• 2:43
  essentially engaged in fishing expedition at SSA, searching for
• 2:47
  a fraud epidemic based on little more than suspicion.
• 2:51
  She noted that DOGE had launched a search for the proverbial
• 2:54
  needle in a haystack without any concrete knowledge that the
• 2:58
  needle was actually in that haystack.
• 3:01
  The order came after a government employee, a union,
• 3:04
  filed suit in February 2025 arguing that Doge's access
• 3:09
  violated federal privacy laws and put millions of America's
• 3:12
  personal information at risk. The Supreme Court reversed the
• 3:15
  restraining order in June 2025 and allowed DOGE members to
• 3:19
  continue accessing Social Security data.
• 3:22
  Now, the legal battle over Doge's access to SSA systems
• 3:25
  began. Within weeks of Trump's second
• 3:27
  inauguration, DOGE team members showed up at the Social Security
• 3:31
  Administration and started demanding access to files.
• 3:34
  Acting Commissioner Michelle King resigned after refusing A
• 3:38
  DOGE request to access the agency's sensitive government
• 3:41
  records, and the DOGE team argued they needed access to
• 3:44
  modernized technology, maximize efficiency, and read out waste,
• 3:48
  fraud, and abuse. Those stated purposes now appear
• 3:51
  incomplete given the DOJ's disclosure about communications
• 3:55
  with political groups focused on election fraud.
• 3:59
  Now. The DOJ filing also revealed a
• 4:02
  separate data handling problem involving Cloudflare.
• 4:05
  Social Security Administration learned that between March 7th
• 4:08
  and March 17th, 2025, DOGE team members used links to share data
• 4:13
  through Cloudflare servers. Cloudflare is not approved for
• 4:17
  storing SSA data and operates outside the agency's security
• 4:21
  protocols. SSA did not know DOGE members
• 4:25
  were using Cloudflare during this period.
• 4:28
  Because Cloudflare is a third party entity, Social Security
• 4:31
  Administration has not been able to determine exactly what data
• 4:34
  was shared or whether the data still exists on those servers.
• 4:38
  The 10 day window of Cloudflare usage ended just three days
• 4:41
  before Judge Hollander issued her restraining order.
• 4:46
  Now I've been digging through the analytics of the show and
• 4:48
  notice that 37% of you are following with the show and I
• 4:51
  appreciate you and it's going up and for you I'm forever
• 4:55
  grateful. Now there's 63% of you that
• 4:58
  listen to the show and just forgot to hit the subscribe or
• 5:01
  follow button. That's totally fine.
• 5:03
  I do it all the time. I watch shows on YouTube.
• 5:05
  I listen to podcasts, this is a 5 or 6 episodes sometimes and I
• 5:09
  finally I'll hit the subscribe button.
• 5:10
  I'm like, you know what, it's worth it.
• 5:13
  But I've been an independent journalist covering Elon Musk,
• 5:15
  SpaceX, XAIX, Tesla, Space Flight and tech for the last six
• 5:20
  or seven years. And I'm going to continue for
• 5:23
  the next 10 years. And all I ask from you is one
• 5:26
  second of your time to hit the follower subscribe button on the
• 5:29
  platform that you're listening or watching on right now.
• 5:31
  Thank you so much. I appreciate you and I'm happy
• 5:34
  to have you in this community now.
• 5:37
  The SSA referred both DOGE employees to the Office of
• 5:40
  Special Counsel in late December 2025 for potential Hatch Act
• 5:45
  violations. the Hatch Act bars federal employment government
• 5:49
  employees from using their official positions for political
• 5:52
  purposes. The DOJ said that it remains
• 5:55
  unclear whether the two DOGE team members actually share data
• 5:58
  with the political advocacy group.
• 6:00
  However, Shapiro noted that e-mail suggests DOGE team
• 6:03
  members could have been asked to assist the group by accessing
• 6:07
  SSA data to match the voter rolls.
• 6:10
  Now, the referral does not mean the employees were guilty of
• 6:13
  wrongdoing, only that the allegations require
• 6:15
  investigation by the Office of Special Counsel.
• 6:20
  Now this disclosure arrives 5 months after whistleblower
• 6:23
  Charles Borges sounded the alarm about DOGE handling data.
• 6:29
  They served as s s as Chief Data Officer and filed a complaint in
• 6:32
  August 2025 alleging that DOGE officials copied the entire
• 6:37
  Nibbett database to a vulnerable cloud servo.
• 6:41
  Now this database is the master fire for all Social Security
• 6:44
  card applications containing names, birth dates, addresses,
• 6:48
  Social Security numbers, citizenship status, race and
• 6:53
  ethnicity, and parents names for over 300 million Americans.
• 6:58
  His complaint also revealed that within 24 hours of Judge
• 7:02
  Hollander issuing the temporary restraining order, senior career
• 7:05
  officials at SSA received instructions to undo the court
• 7:09
  ordered access restrictions for two DOGE employees and grant
• 7:13
  them new expanded privileges. SSA Chief Information Officer
• 7:18
  Aram Maghadasi, who was previously associated with DOGE,
• 7:22
  authorized the arrangement despite career officials
• 7:25
  flagging it as high risk now. Borges submitted his involuntary
• 7:31
  resignation days after his whistleblower complaint became
• 7:34
  public. He wrote in his resignation
• 7:36
  letter that SSA's actions against him made his duties
• 7:40
  impossible to perform legally and ethically.
• 7:43
  He described experiencing exclusion, isolation and a
• 7:46
  hostile work environment. After raising concerns, His
• 7:49
  resignation later reportedly vanished from recipients inboxes
• 7:52
  within 30 minutes of being sent, raising questions about
• 7:56
  censorship against him. The Government Accountability
• 7:59
  Project, which filed this complaint, said Borges no longer
• 8:02
  felt the he could continue working at SSA in good
• 8:06
  conscience given what he had witnessed.
• 8:09
  Andrea Mesa, the organization's director of campaigns and Borges
• 8:13
  attorney, stated that his bravery is coming forward was an
• 8:16
  important step toward mitigating the risks before it was too
• 8:22
  late. Now the Hatch Act referrals face
• 8:25
  a practical enforcement problem. The Trump White House has
• 8:28
  repeatedly indicated that it does not prioritize Hatch Act
• 8:31
  enforcement, treating the federal ethics law as largely
• 8:34
  irrelevant. Not a law that they say no.
• 8:38
  Even if the official or the Office of Special Counsel finds
• 8:41
  violations, punishment would ultimately come from the Trump
• 8:44
  administration itself. And Elon Musk stepped down from
• 8:47
  Doge in spring of 2025, but the employees he brought into SSA
• 8:51
  remained embedded in the agency. Doji's original justification
• 8:56
  for accessing SSA records was to modernize technology and root
• 9:00
  out waste, fraud, and abuse. But the revelation that
• 9:02
  employees may have used this access to coordinate with
• 9:05
  political groups on election challenges cuts directly against
• 9:10
  their stated purpose.