Elon Musk may have left working with Donald Trump to return to his heavily government-subsidized businesses, but that doesn't mean he departed without a parting gift from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) he created.
According to an analysis conducted by the Washington Post and published on Monday morning, DOGE staffers -- many of them closely tied to the billionaire –– gained access to a treasure trove of private information in seven key government departments that is now raising new alarms among watchdogs and Trump business competitors.
The report from Desmond Butler, Jonathan O'Connell, Hannah Natanson and Aaron Gregg points out that while there is no evidence DOGE staffers "Viewed or misused government information to benefit Musk’s business empire" but that has not allayed fears.
According to the report, "DOGE secured the power to view records that contain competitors’ trade secrets, nonpublic details about government contracts, and sensitive regulatory actions or other information."
That led an executive with a company competing with Musk's Space X to warn, "So much of the data that we submit to the government is competitively sensitive. When we do that, we assume it’s protected. And now, it feels that we are vulnerable.”
Pointing out that Musk's level of potential future involvement with DOGE or the government is up in the air, the Post is reporting, "the information the unit was able to view will remain valuable, experts said, because it has the potential to help Musk’s firms expand into new industries, win additional government contracts, or identify employees who reported unsafe working conditions to federal investigators."
The report goes on to note that at least 20 DOGE aides previously worked for Musk, adding that more than a handful departed with him when he stepped away and then began his sniping at the president.
As part of a lawsuit over DOGE's purging of goverment employees, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) technologist Erie Meyer told lawyers, "Musk could never have gotten ‘God tier’ access to this kind of information as a private citizen. This kind of data access was unprecedented in government because there were protections in place, until now, to prevent it.”
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