Trump’s DOJ Admits DOGE May Have Misused Social Security Data and Assisted Advocacy Group’s Effort to ‘Overturn Election Results’

The Department of Justice acknowledged in a new court filing that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may have acted outside Social Security Administration policy — including interacting with a political advocacy group whose stated goal was to “overturn election results.”

In the Jan. 16 filing, the Social Security Administration (SSA) said it identified “communications, use of data, and other actions” by DOGE that could have fallen outside agency rules.

According to the filing, a political advocacy group contacted two DOGE employees and asked them to analyze state voter rolls. The group was not named, but the filing said its purpose “was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.”

The filing also alleges that one DOGE team member, acting in his capacity as an SSA employee, signed a “Voter Data Agreement” with the advocacy group.

“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” or the executed agreement, the filing states.

SSA also noted that the agreement “was not reviewed or approved through the agency’s data exchange procedures,” adding that the agency discovered it during an unrelated review in November 2025.

The following month, SSA made two referrals under the Hatch Act to the government ethics office. The Hatch Act restricts certain political activities by federal employees.

It remains unclear whether DOGE shared Social Security data with the advocacy group.

“Email communications reviewed by SSA suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls, but SSA has not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group,” the filing says.

SSA said DOGE required access to Social Security records as part of its mission to “modernize technology and to ‘maximize efficiency and productivity,’” and noted that DOGE team members completed privacy and ethics training.

The agency further reported learning that DOGE members used an unapproved third-party server, Cloudflare, to share data. The filing says it has not yet been determined what data, if any, was uploaded to Cloudflare or whether any of it remains on that server.

The agency’s review of DOGE is ongoing.

The filing marks the Trump administration’s first acknowledgment that DOGE may have inappropriately handled Social Security data, CNN reported.

The disclosure follows allegations by former SSA chief data officer Charles Borges, who claimed in August 2025 that DOGE workers created a copy of data tied to more than 300 million Americans on a cloud computing server.

Elon Musk served as the inaugural head of DOGE from January to May 2025, when President Donald Trump announced the Tesla CEO would leave his White House role after his special government employee contract ended.

In February 2025, more than 20 civil service employees resigned from DOGE, saying they refused to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services,” according to a joint resignation letter obtained by a news organization.

Trump and Musk later had a public fallout, but have appeared to reconnect. On Jan. 4, Musk posted on X that he had a “lovely” dinner with the president and first lady Melania Trump.