Gavin Kliger
A poster boy for DOGE’s wanton cruelty and destruction, Gavin Kliger is a software developer with five years of experience who has shown a particular flair for being the face of DOGE’s abuse of federal personnel. At USAID, he was the one who locked staff out of the building. At CFPB, he vandalized the website and later returned to run a marathon 36-hour prep session for massive layoffs where he reportedly screamed at staff to work even harder at laying off their colleagues. Arriving at the IRS, he reportedly pulled out five different laptops from his bag to show the various agencies he had been granted access to. He has since left a few of those positions – or very possibly been fired – but he still has his fingers in a lot of pies, and the collection of laptops to prove it.
Likely aliases: OPM-05
Positions
| Position | Dates | Notes |
|---|---|---|
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1/20-2/18
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[as OPM-05] appointed Senior Advisor to the Director for Information Technology, Office of the Director (Schedule C, NTE 2025-05-20, GS-15, supervisory, excepted, $195,200) «hired at maximum salary for GS federal employee in DC» | |
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1/27
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detail Wash. Post | |
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c.2/01
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detail court doc | |
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2/07-5/08
fired
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detail Bloomberg | |
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2/18
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[as OPM-05] converted to permanent position Senior Advisor to the Director for Information Technology, Office of the Director (Schedule C, GS-15, supervisory, excepted, $195,200) | |
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2/19-4/17
fired
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detail (NTE 2025-06-19) Tax Notes | |
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c.3/01
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[as OPM-05] detail «detail in court doc, date from Kliger spotted at VOA around start of March» court doc | |
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c.3/28
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likely detailed Axios | |
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likely detailed NYT | |
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internal xfer NYT | |
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[as OPM-05] detail «detail in court doc» court doc |
Systems
| System | Dates | Notes |
|---|---|---|
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website
1/20
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1/20 | Agency Website
This is a stand-in for whatever website platform an agency is using (OPM) unknown access «listed as grant for “Web Admin” on 1/20. Not revoked as of 2/12» court doc |
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github
1/20
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1/20 | GitHub
A service owned by Microsoft for developers to run version control on their applications and back them up to shared repositories that can be used by other developers. Github is provided as both a hosted service (at github.com) or via versions that can be installed with agency data centers (aka GitHub Enterprise or GHE). Access to Github would be expected for developers, but doesn’t necessarily mean the person is a coder. (OPM) unknown access «Github Enterprise» court doc |
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USA Staffing
1/20
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1/20 | USA Staffing
A platform for federal agencies to recruit and onboard employees. (OPM) admin access «USA Staffing Core + Admin Portal - DEV/TST/STG/TRN/PRD» court doc |
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AD
2/07-5/08
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2/07-5/08 | Active Directory
A system for controlling access to other systems within an agency (CFPB) unknown access (never accessed) granted by CIO court doc |
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Microsoft Entra ID
2/07-5/08
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2/07-5/08 | Microsoft Entra ID
A centralized identity provider used to support single-sign-on (SSO) and centralize access control for agencies. (CFPB) unknown access (never accessed) granted by CIO court doc |
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PAC
2/07-5/08
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2/07-5/08 | Physical Access Control
Possibly a system for controlling and monitoring physical access to CFPB buildings (CFPB) unknown access granted by CIO court doc |
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website
3/08-5/08
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3/08-5/08 | Agency Website
This is a stand-in for whatever website platform an agency is using (CFPB) read-write access granted by Other Luke Farritor «admin Entra access used to grant website access» court doc |
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Sharepoint
4/12-5/08
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4/12-5/08 | Microsoft Sharepoint
Microsoft service for sharing documents within an organization (CFPB) admin access granted by CIO «Used by Gavin to access documents to run layoffs» court doc |
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Power Automate
4/12-4/13
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4/12-4/13 | Power Automate
A Microsoft tool for automating tasks that operate on documents and providing to staff (CFPB) admin access court doc |
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Power Automate
4/17-4/17
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4/17-4/17 | Power Automate
A Microsoft tool for automating tasks that operate on documents and providing to staff (CFPB) admin access court doc |
Events
| Agency | Date | Event |
|---|---|---|
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1/20
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1/20
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Access:
IT staff at OPM are pulled into a “911-esque call” requesting that “a political team” of 6 individuals must be given access to OPM systems. These include Charles Ezell, Greg Hogan, and Amanda Scales, as well as unidentified employees OPM-03 (Akash Bobba), OPM-05 (Gavin Kliger) and OPM-07 (Brian Bjelde). These DOGE staffers are granted administrative access to USAJOBS, USA Staffing, and USA Performance systems.
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1/27
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Disruption:
After the arrival of DOGE in the agency, senior staff are summoned to a meeting with Gavin Kliger and Luke Farritor. The DOGE team then presented agency leadership with a list of 57 employees involved with payments to be placed on immediate administrative leave and locked out of system access. The list reportedly made little sense and involved many staff not involved with payments.
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1/30
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Disruption:
Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger demand that all senior managers at USAID be stripped of their power to authorize payments - and that they alone become the only authorizers.
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2/03
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Disruption:
All USAID staff receive and email that the building is indefinitely closed. It included Gavin Kliger’s email address at USAID.
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2/06
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Onboard:
A DOGE team consisting of Luke Farritor, Jeremy Lewin, Nikhil Rajpal, Gavin Kliger and Chris Young enters the CFPB headquarters and is given equipment and onboarded with a quick session on privacy policies in force at the CFPB.
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2/07
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Disruption:
The CFPB homepage is deleted and returns a HTTP 404 Not Found error (the rest of the site remains online). The CFPB social media account on X is also deleted. These actions are likely taken by Gavin Kliger, who was granted admin access to the website.
(fuzz: Gavin Kliger access named in later court documents)
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2/09
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Disruption:
Using their admin access, Gavin Kliger and Luke Farritor completely disable accounts for all other USAID staff on the agency’s system for creating and tracking payments. They now have absolute control.
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2/12
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Directory:
In a FOIA request, Democracy Forward names DOGE staff known to be at OPM at that time.
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2/20
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Official:
In emails with USDA staff to identify climate-related terms to look for and cancel in grants, Gavin Kliger also alludes to DOGE developing LLM models that would analyze grant descriptions for specific language.
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2/20
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Access:
Facing a revolt over privacy concerns by staff at the IRS, The Treasury Department agrees to block Gavin Kliger from the IDRS system and provide him only with anonymized data.
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2/21
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Official:
USDA Secretary Rollins posts a photo of a grant-cancellation session on the @DOGE_USDA account. None of the participants are identified, but it looks like Gavin Kliger is in the picture.
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2/28
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Official:
Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, DOGE representatives embedded at the IRS, on Friday asked IRS lawyers to assist in creating an “omnibus” agreement with other federal agencies that would allow a broad swath of federal officials to cross-reference benefits rolls with taxpayer data.
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c.3/01
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3/28
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Interagency:
After the CIO and CISO are sidelined, Gavin Kliger joins a call with Katrine Trampe to pressure a senior advisor in human resources at DOI to direct them to the system owner for FPPS.
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4/04
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Sighting:
Axios reports that Gavin Kliger and Emily Bryant have started work at the FTC, looking at grants and contracts at the agency.
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4/08
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4/10
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4/10
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Official:
Gavin Kliger receives a warning from the CFPB Ethics Office that his stock holdings present serious concerns about possible conflicts of interest. He is required to divest himself of prohibited holdings by May 8th and excuse himself from decisions that might affect his holdings immediately.
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4/11
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4/12
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Interagency:
CFPB leadership under Russell Vought uses the opening granted by the appeals court to attempt another massive RIF. Emailing from his USAID email account, Jeremy Lewin kicks off the process by providing Gavin Kliger and Adam Martinez with a letter to use for RIFs at the CFPB.
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4/12
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Interagency:
Gavin Kliger begins working with Adam Martinez of CFPB and Jeremy Lewin at USAID on the infrastructure to automate a massive RIF at the CFPB. This includes scripts to send termination letters to each employee.
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4/12
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Interagency:
Emailing this time from his CFPB account, Jeremy Lewin shares the documentation for the upcoming CFPB RIF with DOGE staff posted at several agencies (Zach Terrell and Alexandra Beynon). He also includes DOGE staff at CFPB: Gavin Kliger, Chris Young and Jordan Wick. It’s unclear if they are representing their individual agencies or are just taking part as DOGE members in the conversation.
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4/12
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Official:
Jeremy Lewin emails CFPB leadership asking for full global admininstrative access for Entra and HRConnect to be restored for the DOGE engineers Gavin Kliger and Jordan Wick. Weirdly, this list includes Luke Farritor who offboarded at CFPB on 2025-03-04. This request is denied by the agency CIO.
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4/13
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Interagency:
Adam Martinez responds in the affirmative to an email (contents redacted in court filings) requesting items/access for unspecified people to conduct the RIF. Several DOGE staffers (Ashley Boizelle and Steve Davis as well as Gavin Kliger and Jeremy Lewin) are also cc’ed on the message
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4/13
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Access:
In an email, CFPB CIO Chris Chilbert reports that Gavin Kliger has been granted access to Ops HC - Prod to build the RIF automation. He also asks to confirm that Gavin Kliger should have his access immediately revoked to systems that let him deactivate employee email accounts or lock them out of their laptops.
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4/13
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Access:
In an email, CFPB CIO Chris Chilbert informs Gavin Kliger that he will not be granted global admin access for his requests.
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4/16
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Interagency:
Noah Peters at OPM denies the CFPB request made by Adam Martinez as well as Jeremy Lewin and Gavin Kliger to conduct an “emergency” RIF at the CFPB which would only give employees 30 days before their termination.
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4/17
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Disruption:
According to sworn testimony by Alex Doe, Gavin Kliger forces the entire CFPB team to work for 36 hours straight and subjects them to frequent verbal abuse.
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5/08
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Offboard:
Gavin Kliger leaves the CFPB, officially because his detail had ended but his departure date is also the day he would be in violation of ethics rules for having not sold stock holdings prohibited to CFBP staff.
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Open Questions
- Why was Gavin Kliger given admin for access control systems at the CFPB?