Unusual legal questions are raised by Musk’s entry into government with DOGE
WIRED identifies six young men who aren’t really citizens but are interested in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project
WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” One of the engineers appears to be working as a volunteer and hold a bunch of different job titles.
The designers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, and Gautier Cole Killian. They have not responded to WIRED’s requests for comment. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
The Associated Press reported DOGE representatives have also gained access to classified information at the U.S. Agency for International Development, a decades-old foreign aid agency Musk says he plans to shut down. The small business administration’s systems offer loans and support to small firms according to PBS News Hour.
“What we’re seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what’s going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what’s happening because these aren’t really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”
Federal Ethics and the Trump/Trump Campaign: Bobba, Coristine, and Euclidean – A Realist Thinker at the White House
Bobba has attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to his now- deletedLinkedIn, he was an investment engineering intern at the hedge fund, and previously worked for both Meta and Palantir. He was a guest on a podcast that Aman Manazir hosts, where he talked about how to land a dream job.
Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. The copy of his resume obtained by WIRED states that he worked for Neuralink for three months last summer.
Even though things are described as unprecedented, former White House officials are shocked by Musk’s campaign to upend agencies because of its level of control.
The employment status of Musk has caused confusion in parts of the federal government, as the White House explains on Monday. Musk is a special government employee according to the Press Secretary. A person can not work for more than 130 days a year to perform limited services.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Minority Leader, said on Monday that the federal government was being taken over by a shadow government.
Musk, the biggest donor in the 2024 election, has been using X to pounce on his critics, both Democrats and Republicans, who have questioned the reach of Musk’s authority and just how much oversight he is receiving from Trump and senior White House officials.
“In terms of rule of law, we are losing it rapidly,” said Eric Rubin, a retired ambassador who spent nearly 40 years in the foreign service. “Musk and DOGE are creating many court cases that would take months or years to resolve,” he said. They can damage before that happens.
Federal ethics experts say since Musk operates six companies that cross multiple industries, including the rocket company SpaceX and the electric carmaker Tesla, it may be difficult for him to avoid running afoul of strict conflict-of-interest laws.
“He is not able to take part in United States government matters that have an effect on his financial holdings.” said Richard Painter, the White House’s top ethics lawyer. Painter said that if he did, he would be committing a crime.
Gavin Kliger: a special advisor to the director of the US Department of Personnel Management at the federal office of senate offices in Silicon Valley
The reports said DOGE representatives sought access to a “secure compartmented information facility,” which is a room filled with sensitive documents where only those with a high-level security clearance can enter.
Some young engineers from Silicon Valley have joined Musk’s effort. That includes Gavin Kliger, whose LinkedIn page describes him as “special advisor to the director” at the federal Office of Personnel Management. In the year 2020, he attended the University of California, Berkeley. He was a senior software engineer at Databricks, and worked as a software engineer at the micro-Blogging platform in 2019.
A USAID.gov email address belonging to Kliger appeared on an email sent early on Monday morning to USAID staff informing them the agency’s Washington headquarters would be closed for the day. NPR asked him about his role at OPM, but he didn’t respond.
Source: Elon Musk is barreling into government with DOGE, raising unusual legal questions
“Hands off,'” Eisen said in an interview with the PLO-Newton Ethics & Privacy Working Group (Oasis)
“We filed a lawsuit to say, ‘hands off,'” Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer under former President Barack Obama, said in an interview. “You can’t have my data. You can’t have my spouse’s data. You can’t have my child’s data. That information is too precious,” said Eisen, who is representing the alliance and the unions. “This is wrong. It’s not legal.
