Justice Department: Musk's DOGE Team May Have Misused Social Security Data

The Trump administration has acknowledged that members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team may have improperly accessed and shared sensitive Social Security data, according to newly disclosed court filings.

In a filing dated Friday, Justice Department official Elizabeth Shapiro revealed that two DOGE personnel working inside the Social Security Administration (SSA) had undisclosed communications with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states.” One of the employees also signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to help match state voter rolls. SSA has since referred both employees for possible violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal workers from using their official roles for political activity.

The disclosure was part of a series of “corrections” to earlier court testimony in legal disputes over DOGE’s access to SSA systems. The updated record shows that DOGE team members shared data using unapproved third-party servers and may have accessed information a court had explicitly barred them from using.

While SSA previously maintained that DOGE’s work was limited to identifying fraud and modernizing agency technology, Shapiro said the new revelations undermine those claims. She emphasized that SSA leadership was unaware of the employees’ communications with the advocacy group or of the so-called “Voter Data Agreement” at the time.

Shapiro noted there is no definitive evidence that Social Security data was ultimately shared with the advocacy group, but emails indicate DOGE members may have been asked to assist by matching SSA data to voter rolls.

The filing also revealed that Steve Davis, a senior adviser to Musk, was copied on a March 2025 email containing a password-protected file with private information on roughly 1,000 individuals drawn from Social Security systems. It remains unclear whether Davis accessed the file, and SSA officials say they are currently unable to review its contents.

Additional corrections show that DOGE personnel briefly retained access to restricted Social Security profiles after a court order barred such access, and that another employee had prolonged access to a call-center database containing private information. DOJ said it is unknown whether any of that data was actually viewed or used.

Finally, Shapiro disclosed that DOGE team members shared data through Cloudflare, a third-party server not approved under SSA security protocols. Because Cloudflare is external to the agency, SSA cannot determine what data was uploaded or whether it still exists.