DOJ Says DOGE May Have Misused Social Security Data After Political Group Sought Voter Rolls

The Justice Department told a federal judge in Maryland that members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), working with the Social Security Administration (SSA), may have improperly used SSA data after being contacted by an unnamed political advocacy group.

In a court filing on Friday, DOJ attorneys said SSA’s internal review found that in March—after a Maryland judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) limiting DOGE’s access to SSA records—an advocacy organization contacted two DOGE team members requesting analysis of state voter rolls it had obtained. The group’s stated purpose, DOJ said, was "to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States."

According to the filing, one DOGE team member signed a "Voter Data Agreement" with the advocacy group and sent an executed copy on March 24, four days after the TRO was entered. DOJ said there is currently no evidence that other SSA employees were aware of the communications or the agreement, and the agreement was not processed through SSA’s formal data-exchange procedures.

SSA’s review also found that from March 7 through March 17, DOGE team members used links to share data via the third-party server Cloudflare. The filing noted Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and using it that way is outside SSA security protocols. Because Cloudflare is a third-party service, SSA has not been able to determine precisely which data were shared or whether the files remain on the server.

SSA officials said they first discovered the issues during an unrelated review in November—the same month DOGE ended operations. The Trump administration made two Hatch Act referrals to the Office of Special Counsel in late December, and a whistleblower report in August had previously accused DOGE staffers of placing millions of Social Security records "in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight."

"The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion," U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote when she entered the restraining order, warning that the effort risked exposing millions of people’s private information.

The Supreme Court in June reversed the temporary restraining order and allowed DOGE members to access Social Security data. DOGE had argued that access was needed "to modernize technology" and "to maximize efficiency and productivity."

DOJ’s filing acknowledged that some data handling did not follow SSA procedures and that investigators are still determining whether personal information was transferred to the advocacy group. The matter remains under review by federal authorities.

Reporting references: DOJ court filing, Politico and NBC News.