2 DOGE staffers at Social Security agency may have violated Hatch Act, DOJ says
Two members of Elon Musk's DOGE team at the Social Security Administration were referred for possible Hatch Act violations over allegedly secretly communicating with an advocacy group seeking data to overturn election results, according to a Justice Department court filing disclosed Tuesday.
The filing -- which says it remains unclear whether the unidentified DOGE employees shared data with the unnamed advocacy group -- details emails that suggest the employees could have been asked to access SSA data to match voter rolls.
"SSA determined in its recent review that in March 2025, a political advocacy group contacted two members of SSA's DOGE Team with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired," wrote senior Justice Department official Elizabeth Shapiro. "The advocacy group's stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States."
SSA made the two Hatch Act referrals to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in late December 2025, according to the filing. The disclosure appeared in a Friday filing correcting earlier SSA testimony during last year's court fight over data access by the Department of Government Efficiency, which was launched by Musk to help slash the federal government.
Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and X, stepped down from his DOGE role last spring.
The court filing was first reported by Politico.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
One of the DOGE employees referred to in the filing also signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to help match state voter rolls, according to the court filing.
The filing also said that DOGE team members used Cloudflare, an unapproved third-party server, to share SSA data outside agency security protocols, doing so in a way that left SSA unable to determine what information was shared or whether it still exists.
"Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and when used in this manner is outside SSA's security protocols. SSA did not know, until its recent review, that DOGE Team members were using Cloudflare during this period," the filing reads.
"Because Cloudflare is a third-party entity, SSA has not been able to determine exactly what data were shared to Cloudflare or whether the data still exist on the server," says the filing.
