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A few days ago I did this post on the taxonomy of DOGE, who’s actually involved in it, the people who are formally part of it and the ones who are part of Musk’s operation but have not gotten official appointments in the executive branch. In that post I asked why it is that Musk seems to continue to rely on this subset of DOGE personnel — the dozen or so under-25 techies — as the landing parties who go in and actually force their way into these departments. It happens again and again. In that post I noted that Gavin Kliger is the guy at IRS. And in a conversation with a fellow journalist I was just told that another of the original crew is the lead now in the break-in at SSA.
I can’t confirm the identity of the person at SSA myself and in any case that’s the other journalist’s story to break. But the point is that this happens every time. So why is that? ProPublica has the list of all the DOGE people and there are lots of people with a lot more professional experience, either lawyers or longtime employees of Musk’s firms. So why does it continue to be this really small group of guys? They almost all have connections as interns at Musk companies. But interns, not people he’s worked with for years and presumably knows at a deep level.
As I was sitting here yesterday evening it came to me. Musk keeps using these guys because they’re willing to do things these other more experienced people are not. I want to be crystal clear: This isn’t something I’m reporting. I believe it’s just the most logical reading of the available evidence.
The big-picture bad act here is that the Congress had the power of the purse. This whole operation involves seizing that power away from Congress. That’s the big, bad act. But in the mechanics of how this is being carried out there appears to be a lot of more granular and specific criminal conduct — how you treat confidential information, authorization to take certain actions, cancel contracts, fire people, take possession of computer systems, offload government data to private servers, etc. It’s hard to know the details precisely because everything is intentionally opaque. We’re only getting most information from leaks. But these people appear to have, at points, operated in each of the listed buckets.
We’re not focusing on that a lot at the moment since obviously this DOJ isn’t going to prosecute them. And behind that fact, the White House is clearly relying on a theory of presidential power that says that all these “laws” are very much that — “laws” with scare quotes around them. They’re all unconstitutional because the President’s word and authorization trumps any law covering the executive branch, which under this theory means anything that isn’t narrowly within Congress or the judicial branch.
But back in the real world those are still laws. And if you’ve got a career and a family and a mortgage, maybe you say you believe those theories but that’s still not the same as being perfectly happy to just walk into these places and just do absolutely whatever Elon tells you to do. Because sure Trump has your back today. But tomorrow is a long time. And there are state courts and prosecutors, too, and bar associations and civil suits. Even if you assume a future administration that is laggard in pressing legal consequences like the last one, those things still create headaches. Lawyers cost money. These are bad acts you’d probably prefer someone else do, especially if they’re willing.
I want to stress again that this is my surmise. But what is the other explanation? The federal government is really, really big. Musk doesn’t care about any of these agencies. But even if your intent is to break them some basic understanding of how they work would help. None of these kids have any of that. Having seven or eight guys slowly work their way through the federal bureaucracy with all its different agencies is going to take time. Why not have one DOGE lead hit every agency on Day One? Again, I think this is the reason. These guys aren’t concerned about the consequences.