What court docs reveal about DOGE access to sensitive data : NPR

The DOGE staffer who resigned from his post over old racist tweets — and who broke data-sharing rules, an audit found — has been rehired to work with sensitive data at several federal agencies.

The staffer is Marko Elez, a Department of Labor employee detailed to the DOGE entity within the White House, according to a Saturday court filing. It says the Labor Department is aware of four other agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where Elez is also detailed or employed.

The court filing provides an accounting of the access Elez and other DOGE employees have inside certain sensitive and secure databases. And it comes as federal judges in other cases have found the Elon Musk-led effort has likely broken the law and has been largely unable to explain why it needs such sweeping data access.

The filing is in response to a lawsuit filed by labor unions and nonprofits, which are seeking more information about the Trump administration staffers who’ve been reported as part of DOGE.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, has so far declined to block DOGE from its work inside the Department of Labor, HHS and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but has ordered more discovery into how the White House entity has operated.

From resigning to accessing more sensitive data

Elez resigned from his Treasury position in early February after racist social media posts resurfaced, though Musk soon pledged to rehire him. A later internal audit of Elez’s work account that was highlighted in a different court filing found he improperly sent a spreadsheet of what was described as “low risk” personally identifying information to two General Services Administration (GSA) officials.

In that case, U.S. District Court Judge Jeannette Vargas blocked DOGE access to Treasury data on Feb. 21, finding “a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law.”

But just four days later, Elez was given read-only access to four Labor Department databases, including one on unemployment insurance, according to Saturday’s filing.

Elez was given access as part of President Trump’s directive “to identify waste, fraud, and abuse and to modernize government technology and software to increase efficiency and productivity,” according to the filing, which said Elez had not accessed any of the sensitive Labor Department systems, as of March 26.

The week of March 5, Elez was granted permission to access several HHS systems, including Medicare and Medicaid payment databases, HHS contract systems and a “national database of wage and employment information” that aids with child support enforcement. The filing says HHS later disabled his permission to access the Medicare and Medicaid databases.

An effort to reach Elez has not been successful.

The most in-depth look at DOGE’s access

Saturday’s filing offers the clearest-yet picture about DOGE workers and their data access.

NPR previously reported that DOGE staffer Akash Bobba is one of fewer than 50 people who have the highest access to Social Security Administration data — and Bobba also has access to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Education Department files.

A review of thousands of pages of court documents across more than a dozen lawsuits challenging DOGE access at agencies finds sparse details about mostly-unnamed employees embedded in different agencies.

Some of what’s new in the Saturday filing:

The filing details a dozen HHS systems that Luke Farritor has access to, including administrator privileges for the department’s grants payment management service, contracting system and its human resources management system.

Edward Coristine, who works for the GSA and is detailed to HHS, was also granted access to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payment data and “has been involved in standard software development activities inside the HHS internal cloud environment.”

Amy Gleason, who has previously been identified by the Trump administration as the acting administrator of DOGE, is currently an HHS employee.

At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the DOGE team includes Jordan Wick, Christopher Young, Nikhil Rajpal and Farritor. Wick had access to the CFPB financial, contract and human resources systems.

DOGE staffers have not “modified, copied and shared with unauthorized users” the systems they have access to or removed any records from the systems, the filing says.

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a sweeping ruling that blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the office and outlined in great detail the DOGE-led effort to shutter the bureau.

“Absent an injunction freezing the status quo – preserving the agency’s data, its operational capacity, and its workforce – there is a substantial risk that the defendants will complete the destruction of the agency completely in violation of law well before the Court can rule on the merits, and it will be impossible to rebuild,” the order reads.

A DOGE affiliate named Kyle Schutt who works at GSA and is detailed to the Administration for Children and Families was granted access to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Portal.

Someone with the username “kschuttgov” on GitHub changed the U.S. Digital Service website in mid-March to remove contact information for the office that is now the umbrella organization for DOGE.

The White House did not respond to previous questions about DOGE following privacy laws, or if Americans should be concerned about the level of DOGE’s access.