In affidavit, former Social Security official says DOGE is putting benefits at risk

In an affidavit filed in federal court on Friday, a former senior civil servant at the Social Security Administration (SSA) detailed how deputies for Elon Musk forced their way into the agency, formed a clandestine unit, and gained access to its most sensitive databases. Tiffany Flick, the affiant who served as the acting chief of staff to the commissioner of the agency until mid-February, also warned that careless actions by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could lead to interruptions in Social Security payments. The affidavit was filed as part of a lawsuit from labor unions who are requesting an emergency order to block DOGE from accessing Social Security data.

The first DOGE aide embedded at the SSA was Michael Russo, a former executive at a payment processing company that worked for Musk’s satellite company Starlink. He was named as the agency’s chief information officer (CIO) on February 3. Not long after his induction, Russo began urging senior SSA executives to accept Musk’s deferred resignation offer, according to Flick.

He also pressured the agency to quickly onboard Akash Bobba, a 22-year-old software engineer who works for DOGE. “I worked for multiple SSA commissioners across multiple administrations, and that request was unprecedented,” Flick wrote in an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. “I did not understand the apparent urgency with which Mr. Bobba needed to be onboarded and given access to SSA's systems and data, which are highly sensitive.”

The SSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A shadow agency at SSA

Issues with Bobba’s background check took some time to resolve, but Flick said that Russo ultimately got his wish: Bobba was sworn in on February 10 over the phone in an aberrant ceremony. Russo then assigned Bobba to “audit” the work of agency experts.

Around the same time, Flick said that Russo assembled a secretive team assigned to answer to DOGE directly. “Acting Commissioner King requested that Mr. Russo report to her, as the CIO normally would,” Flick wrote, “but he consistently gave evasive answers about his work. It appeared to me that he was actually reporting to DOGE.” A vocal member of Russo’s team was Leland Dudek, then a former mid-level SSA staffer who had worked with DOGE for weeks leading up to Inauguration Day. President Trump has since promoted Dudek to serve as the agency’s acting commissioner.

Much of the information DOGE sought from the SSA related to Musk’s fallacious belief that a significant percentage of Social Security payments are going to dead people. (The theory appears to be derived from Musk misreading a programming language used by the SSA.) Flick explained that DOGE misread the agency’s data again by assuming that multiple benefits paid to a single Social Security number indicated fraud. However, payments to spouses and dependents can be routed through one Social Security number.

As for Bobba, Russo demanded that he be given “full access to SSA data in the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW),” according to Flick. The EDW contains sensitive information on every individual assigned a Social Security number, including employment history, marital status, a list of dependents, and banking and financial information. Gaining full access to the system would provide users with the ability to export and edit data. “Russo repeatedly stated that Mr. Bobba needed access to ‘everything, including source code,’” wrote Flick, who described such an arrangement as unprecedented even for the agency’s most adept technologists. There were also concerns within the SSA about Bobba accessing the data remotely from a U.S. Office of Personnel Management workplace surrounded by other DOGE aides and White House staffers.

Michelle King, then the acting commissioner of the SSA, sought to understand why Bobba would require that level of access. But on February 16, King was forced out and replaced by the pliant Dudek. Before then, Dudek had been on administrative leave for — in his telling — bullying coworkers in his pursuit to assist DOGE.

Flick opted to retire from her post rather than remain in the agency after King’s removal. “I understand that, upon my leaving, then-Acting Commissioner Dudek gave Mr. Bobba and the DOGE team access to at least the EDW and possibly other databases,” Flick wrote, adding, “I am not confident that DOGE associates have the requisite knowledge and training to prevent sensitive information from being inadvertently transferred to bad actors.”

She continued:

Some of the [systems] operate based on old programming languages that require specialized knowledge. Such systems are vulnerable to being broken by inadvertent user error if SSA's longstanding development, separation of duties, and information security policies and procedures are not followed. That could result in benefits payments not being paid out or delays in payments… Additionally, even with only read access DOGE can, and has already, used SSA data to spread mis/disinformation about the amount of fraud in Social Security benefit programs.

Contributing to these concerns is the loss of expertise as civil servants resign or retire ahead of a planned mass layoff. A February 28 memo from Dudek announced the “seperations” [sic] of more than 20 senior SSA staffers. Included in the list were top advisors within the agency’s information technology and cybersecurity offices. The letter conveyed Trump’s plan to “streamline” the agency by reducing regional structures and merging leadership positions.

In remarks to Musk Watch, an SSA employee warned that the personnel changes will prove detrimental, saying, “It means that SSA will not have the capacity or resources to ensure that it can administer its programs and provide benefits to the 71 million+ beneficiaries that SSA serves.” The employee also said the agency’s new leadership is weighing further consolidations. “I understand there was a meeting between the 4 region heads and [they] are thinking of taking the regional office from 550 employees across 10 regions to 65 across 4.”

Former SSA administrator Martin O’Malley has predicted that Trump’s overhaul of the agency will cause breakdowns. “We are already seeing service timelines skyrocket, but then you're going to see intermittent interruptions of the processing and claim system,” O'Malley told WBAL last week. “Ultimately, an interruption in benefits.”