DOGE Track

Leland Dudek

Administrator
Exited govt: 6/XX/25 (reported)

DOGE is only able to subvert agencies when it has the explicit cooperation and support of senior leadership there. Nobody better exemplifies than Leland Dudek, who was a relatively minor supervisor within Social Security before he was placed on leave for insubordination by giving DOGE access without authorization. Soon, he was rewarded for his defiance by being named Acting Commissioner for the agency after the Trump administration fired the existing commissioner.

With the appointment of Steve Bisignano to the role of Commissioner, Leland Dudek has stepped aside out of the limelight and was dismissed by SSA in June. In a recent interview with ProPublica, Dudek has stated that some of his apparent blustering and stumbling in the role were deliberate to wake up people to what was happening, and that he often was the leaked source for articles critical of himself and DOGE.

Positions

Position Notes
SSA
Sources
SSA 2/16/25-5/06/25 promoted to Acting Commissioner
SSA 5/06/25-6/XX/25 demoted «Replaced by Bisignano as confirmed commissioner, ProPublica reports dismissed in June»

Events

Date Event
c.12/15/24
Source
A contractor at the Social Security Administration arranges an introduction for Leland Dudek to meet Steve Davis. (fuzz: Date is just given as “mid-December”)
 Leland Dudek, Steve Davis
1/30/25
Source
Leland Dudek reaches out to Tiffany Flick, the Associate Director of Budget, Facilities and Security to inform her that Mike Russo and Scott Coulter would be onboarding for DOGE. He was a mid-level employee at the time who would not normally be coordinating inter-agency details like this.
 Leland Dudek, Mike Russo, Scott Coulter
2/10/25
Source
Mike Russo summons his new ally Leland Dudek to his office and asks him to explain data discrepancies identified by Elon Musk. Leland convenes a team of dozens of SSA engineers who review the data from the Treasury department and document fallacies of DOGE’s reasoning in a memo. Mike Russo rejects the memo’s conclusions by declaring that DOGE would not trust career civil servants and demanding that Akash Bobba must do his own analysis.
2/10/25
Source
CIO Mike Russo convenes his own internal informational group in SSA where he has conversations with DOGE staff at other agencies about novel ideas for sharing sensitive SSA data. He does not inform Acting SSA Director, Michelle King.
2/14/25
Source
Leland Dudek is placed on administrative leave and is placed under investigation that he committed inappropriate actions to assist DOGE’s activities at the agency.
2/16/25
Source
The acting director of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, receives an email from the White House that she has been fired and Leland Dudek is now the Acting Commissioner.
2/19/25
Source
SSA CIO Mike Russo emails Leland Dudek request access to SSA’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) for several “members of [his] team.” This includes access to the NUMIDENT list of all social security records, Master Beneficiary Record (MBR) and Supplemental Security Record (SSR) master records, as well as copies of SSA payment files which SSA transmits to the Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS) for payment.
2/20/25
Source
Several DOGE staffers working at the agency are identified by Social Security Works (a nonprofit advocacy group).
 Cole Killian, Ethan Shaotran, Leland Dudek, Marko Elez, Nikhil Rajpal
2/24/25
Sources
The Social Security Administration eliminates an internal team of technologists called the Office of Transformation that was working to modernize SSA processes. Although officially made by Leland Dudek, this direction was given by Scott Coulter.
2/27/25
Source
Ethan Shaotran contacts Leland Dudek to inform him that DOGE had identified roughly 3 dozen federal contracts in Maine as “nonessential” and that “we should cancel them” as retribution for the Maine governor publicly countering abuse from the President over transgender athletes. Two of those contracts are for Social Security services in the State.
2/28/25
Source
Via email, SSA-05 (Cole Killian) at the DOGE team at SSA requests and receives approval from Leland Dudek to run a program to identify unrealistically old people in the SSA database. Scott Coulter is cc’ed on the approval.
3/04/25
Source
In a meeting, Dudek stresses again that DOGE will make mistakes and also admits “I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions,” suggesting DOGE is in charge at the agency.
3/20/25
Source
Leland Dudek threatens to shut down the entire Social Security Administration instead of complying with the order to block access for DOGE. He reportedly reaches this conclusion based on the advice of two unnamed senior DOGE leaders.
3/26/25
Source
During his confirmation hearing, Frank Bisignano, the nominee to run the agency, confirms that he had coordinated with Michael Russo but denied a whistleblower report that he had ordered the appointment of other DOGE staff there.
3/27/25
Source
In a sworn declaration, Leland Dudek justifies access to PII in SSA records for SSA-01 (Akash Bobba), SSA-05 (Cole Killian), SSA-08 (Nikhil Rajpal) and SSA-09 (Payton Rehling) on the DOGE team. This access is granted through the SSA’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) system. He asserts that DOGE staff are being granted only the minimum levels of schema access required.
4/01/25
Source
Alarmed at the viral spread of DOGE’s false claim that 40% of all calls to Social Security are fraud, agency staff at SSA draft a public statement to correct the errors in the claim. They are specifically ordered by Katie Miller not to release it. She asserts “the number is 40 percent.”
4/07/25
Source
After some qualms about its legality, Leland Dudek signs two memos authorizing sharing data from the Social Security Administration that would allow DHS and ICE to locate immigrants who had been paying taxes to Social Security (despite not being able to collect it).
 Leland Dudek
4/12/25?
Source
The Social Security Administration shares sensitive information on 100,000 people with DHS, including their addresses, social security numbers, birth and death dates and bank information. Leland Dudek reports this request was made via a phone call late on a Saturday night with the justification that it was needed for a criminal investigation. (fuzz: Date isn’t given, assuming this is after Leland Dudek signed data sharing agreement, but it’s possible agreement was retroactive cover)
5/06/25
Source
Frank Bisignano is confirmed by the Senate to be the new Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, replacing Leland Dudek who was serving as the acting commissioner.