Trump’s DOJ Just Confirmed the DOGE Data Scandal
Two staffers were referred for Hatch Act violations after accessing Social Security data and working with a political group.
Who could have guessed that embedding a crew of unvetted ideologues and tech operatives into federal agencies, without traditional hiring vetting, without civil service protections, and with access to vast troves of personal data, might end in legal trouble?
Oh right. Everyone.
This week, in a quietly filed but legally explosive court document, the U.S. Department of Justice under the Trump administration acknowledged that two staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may have improperly accessed sensitive Social Security data and used that access in connection with a partisan political operation aimed at overturning election results. The filing, submitted on January 19, 2026, is the first formal public acknowledgment from any federal entity that DOGE personnel crossed ethical and legal lines while embedded in the Social Security Administration (SSA).
More than just a dry procedural update, the DOJ’s statement confirms some of the most serious fears raised by whistleblowers, oversight staff, and civil service advocates throughout 2025. It may also signal the beginning of formal legal consequences for those involved.
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What the DOJ filing says
According to the filing, two unnamed members of the DOGE team, assigned to work within SSA, engaged in communications with a political advocacy group in March 2025. That group, unnamed in the filing, reportedly sought to analyze state voter rolls to “find evidence of voter fraud and overturn election results in certain states.”
One of the DOGE staffers allegedly signed a “Voter Data Agreement” with the group, importantly, without going through any of SSA’s formal protocols for data-sharing or review. The implication is that these employees were preparing to provide sensitive personal data to an outside political group, using their official government roles and access to federally protected information.
In addition to the potential misuse of data, the DOJ also disclosed that the staffers may have used Cloudflare, a third-party service not authorized to handle SSA data, to store or transmit sensitive files. In one case, an encrypted, password-protected file—believed to contain Social Security information for roughly 1,000 individuals—was transmitted to a DOGE supervisor. SSA officials have not been able to open or verify the contents of that file, but its very existence raised red flags about security compliance and legal exposure.
Hatch Act violations: what’s being alleged
Because the political advocacy group in question was clearly engaged in partisan election activity, the SSA has now formally referred the two DOGE staffers to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for investigation of potential Hatch Act violations. The Hatch Act, a century-old ethics law, prohibits federal employees from using their official authority or influence to interfere in elections or to engage in political activity while on the job.
If the facts in the DOJ filing are accurate and the Office of Special Counsel finds that the DOGE staffers did in fact use their government positions to support a political cause, the consequences could range from administrative sanctions to removal from federal service to, in extreme cases, referral for criminal investigation.
To be clear, there have been no indictments yet, and no public confirmation that data had been delivered to the political group. The court filing carefully notes that the incident is still under investigation. However, the admission that these actions occurred and the direct link to election-related activity is significant, especially coming from a Justice Department that has, in other contexts, seemed far more interested in defending Trump-aligned figures than exposing them.
What we still don’t know
Many key details remain undisclosed. The identities of the two DOGE staffers have not been released, and it is not known whether they still work for SSA, DOGE, or any federal agency. The name of the advocacy group that sought the voter data also remains sealed in court documents. DOJ has not clarified whether this group received any actual data or whether the DOGE staffers’s coordination stopped short of transmission.
What is known, however, is that this wasn’t an isolated error. The DOGE program was designed from the ground up to circumvent traditional civil service systems, allowing politically aligned operatives—many without clearances or public-sector experience—to act with broad internal authority. These weren’t career SSA employees caught in a misstep. They were politically appointed operatives, handpicked under a structure that prioritized loyalty and “efficiency” over competence and accountability.
We’ve been here before
Readers of this newsletter will recall that we reported on these risks months ago, when whistleblowers at SSA first raised the alarm. Back then, internal staffers alleged that DOGE operatives had copied massive datasets, potentially the full SSA beneficiary file, into an insecure cloud environment without approval or standard cybersecurity protocols in place. Other reports suggested that attempts were made to mask internal data access, disable logging tools, and potentially obscure who had access to what, and when.
At the time, these allegations sounded like the early chapters of a political thriller. Now, they’re being validated in federal court documents filed by Trump’s own Department of Justice.
See our earlier reporting here:
Note: As these are from last spring, they now live in our archive. Become a paid subscriber for full access to our extensive archive and exclusive perks.
A moment of reckoning
DOGE was never just a bureaucratic experiment. It was a political project with a clear ideological bent, an attempt to rewire how the federal government operates by injecting Silicon Valley-style disruption into the most sensitive corners of public administration. That disruption has now resulted in a formal Hatch Act referral tied to possible election interference and the misuse of protected Social Security data.
This isn’t just a scandal about two staffers. It’s a case study in how quickly institutional norms can collapse when they’re intentionally bypassed. It’s about what happens when loyalty replaces competence, when governance becomes a branding exercise, and when powerful political actors treat public data as private property.
The question now is whether watchdogs, investigators, and Congress will take this for what it is: a clear warning that the DOGE experiment didn’t just fail. It endangered public trust in ways that will take years to fully understand and repair.
What happens next
The referral now sits with the Office of Special Counsel, which is tasked with investigating and determining whether formal Hatch Act violations occurred. That process may take months or longer, and the OSC is not required to disclose all findings publicly unless enforcement actions are taken.
Meanwhile, oversight committees in Congress may choose to escalate their own investigations into DOGE, and privacy advocates are already calling for the full release of internal SSA records tied to the March 2025 incident.
Whether criminal charges ever materialize is an open question. However, what is not in doubt is that the alarm bells that civil servants and watchdogs sounded in 2025 were not theoretical. They were dead-on.
This DOJ filing is a signal not just that rules were broken, but that the system still, barely, works well enough to admit it. For now.
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Sources:
“DOGE employees improperly accessed Social Security data, DOJ says” — Axios, January 20, 2026
“Trump administration admits DOGE accessed personal Social Security data” — The Washington Post, January 20, 2026
“Trump DOJ testifies that Elon Musk’s DOGE team stored Social Security data on unapproved servers” — Cointelegraph / Bitget News, January 20, 2026
“Trump DOJ admits DOGE Social Security staff worked with political group trying to ‘overturn election results’” — The Independent, January 21, 2026
“Trump’s DOJ Flags DOGE Team at Social Security Over Election Plot Talks, Data Risks” — Newsweek, January 20, 2026
“Doge improperly shared sensitive social security data, DoJ court filing reveals” — The Guardian, January 21, 2026
“SSA whistleblower warns of major security risk following DOGE data access” — Federal News Network, August 26, 2025
“Whistleblower Report: Trump Administration Put Americans’ Private Social Security Data at Risk” — Whistleblower.org (Protected disclosure), August 28, 2025
“After Trump’s DOGE action, 300 million people’s Social Security data is at risk, whistleblower says” — AP News, August 26, 2025
“Social Security official says DOGE compromised Americans’ data” — The Washington Post, August 26, 2025
these workers need to be arrested and I am sure there are more they need to be made an example of the corruption of Musk and Trump