Category: Pocket Padding

In April 2025, federal IT staffer Dan Berulis filed a whistleblower complaint with Congress alleging that members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had accessed and potentially exfiltrated sensitive information from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Shortly after filing the complaint, Berulis discovered that his car’s brakes had been cut following a minor accident near his home. The NLRB’s Office of the Inspector General opened an investigation in May 2025, which remains ongoing.

A Government Accountability Office report released in April 2026 examined DOGE’s access to NLRB systems but conspicuously covered only the period after Berulis’ complaint was filed. The report’s footnotes revealed that in August 2025, after DOGE members departed the NLRB, the agency deleted team member accounts and associated access records before GAO investigators could observe the systems. This deletion eliminated digital evidence of what data DOGE members accessed and when, preventing confirmation of statements made to investigators. According to Don Moynihan, a University of Michigan public policy professor, the report “raises more questions than it resolves, such as who deleted the data.”

Berulis’ complaint alleged that DOGE officials demanded the highest level of access to NLRB systems, including “tenant owner” accounts with unrestricted permission to read, copy, and alter data, exceeding even the agency’s chief information officer’s access. The NLRB enforces labor laws and investigates unfair labor practices, giving it access to whistleblower identities, testimony, trade secrets, and investigative materials. The GAO acknowledged interviewing NLRB staff about DOGE’s access levels but could not verify their accounts because the accounts had already been deleted. Justin Fox, Nate Cavanaugh, and Jordan Wick were all at the NLRB at various points, but no specific DOGE members are named in the report or Berulis’ complaint.

The deletion of these records violates the General Records Schedule, which mandates that agencies retain access records from systems containing personally identifiable information for six years. The two systems DOGE accessed, the Electronic Official Personnel Folders and the Federal Personnel and Payroll System, both contain federal workers’ personal information. Dan McGrath, senior oversight counsel at Democracy Forward, stated the deletion “violates the Federal Records Act because it’s not preserving their activities.” Michael Duff, a former NLRB lawyer and Saint Louis University law professor, called the deletion “irregular and almost certainly contrary to practice,” noting that deleting data during an ongoing inspector general investigation compounds the concern. WIRED previously reported that DOGE members used encrypted messaging with auto-deleting features, which experts warned could violate federal record retention laws.

The deletion may not be isolated; Berulis’ complaint documented evidence that a DOGE account may have been created and deleted from NLRB cloud systems as early as March 6, 2025. Elon Musk, who led DOGE and owns Tesla and SpaceX, has financial interests in NLRB decisions; the agency dropped its case against SpaceX earlier this year, prompting Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal to request answers on whether the dismissal was politically motivated. In a functioning oversight system, according to Moynihan, this would trigger congressional hearings and sworn testimony, but such accountability remains unlikely.

(Source: https://www.wired.com/story/federal-investigators-say-certain-doge-records-were-deleted/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_brand=wired&utm_social-type=owned&fbclid=IwdGRjcAS_jqNwZG9mA2ZkaWQWUKVvhXR3lFy12rLF31dXHiKpftXWLWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR5ZFGZD-T_vJjIKipMGXHUKyO5UDJPcwxTdUCrATGDEfIdliYMkX5jl6p-HwQ_aem_vaPxhHw7M5OzAYT5Um2qgQ)