DOGE Employees Shared Social Security Data With Group, DOJ Says

The court filing by the Department of Justice also says it’s unclear whether DOGE gave any personal information to a political advocacy organization.

Jack Phillips

Published: 1/21/2026, 4:56:49 PM EST

DOGE Employees Shared Social Security Data With Group, DOJ Says — The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website is displayed on a phone in this photo illustration. (Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times)

A Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee shared Social Security data without the agency’s knowledge, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official said in a Tuesday court filing.

Two DOGE workers embedded in the Social Security Administration (SSA) were contacted by a political advocacy organization that wanted to analyze voter data, according to the DOJ filing, which does not identify the group by name.

The group wanted to determine whether there is “evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” A DOGE employee who was not named signed a “Voter Data Agreement” with the organization, the filing said.

“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,” the filing said. “Nor were they aware of the ‘Voter Data Agreement.’ This agreement was not reviewed or approved through the agency’s data exchange procedures.”

The DOJ filing, written by senior Justice Department official Elizabeth Shapiro, stated that it was unclear whether any personal information was given to the group.

DOGE was established last year after President Donald Trump took office and tasked tech billionaire Elon Musk with slashing federal government waste and fraud. Musk left the Trump administration in May 2025 after his special government employee tenure expired.

Since it was created, DOGE has offered regular updates on its X social media account about contracts that it helped terminate. The task force said in a Jan. 10 post that federal agencies terminated 42 contracts that it deemed wasteful that were worth up to $1.5 billion.

On its website, which was last updated on Jan. 1, DOGE said that it helped save an estimated $215 billion, or roughly $1,335 per taxpayer.

The filing comes as SSA Administrator Frank Bisignano, who is also chief executive of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), suggested to the Washington Post in a recent interview about restructuring at the IRS that he is “fundamentally DOGE, and what I’ve meant by that is I’ve driven efficiency and quality my whole career.”

Previously, he has praised DOGE, saying it’s needed to reduce government fraud and waste. “I look at [DOGE] as a resource to help me,” Bisignano said in June.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that DOGE can have access to Social Security data, overturning a lower court order that had blocked DOGE staffers from accessing it. The highest court also ruled in another lawsuit that DOGE does not have to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.

The order on Social Security data came in response to a March 2025 ruling from U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander that accused DOGE of being “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion.” She had granted a temporary restraining order against the government in the case.

Aside from establishing DOGE, Trump signed several orders to target wasteful federal spending, including one in March to boost efforts within the federal government to identify and remove what the White House deems as waste, fraud, and abuse.

The Epoch Times contacted DOGE for comment on Wednesday. The group has not publicly responded to the court filing.

From The Epoch Times