Social Security Boss Quits as DOGE Digs Into Sensitive Data

America’s top Social Security official has reportedly resigned following a clash with Elon Musk’s efficiency group.

Michelle King, a 30-year veteran of the Social Security Administration and its acting commissioner, stepped down this weekend after a dispute over the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) attempt to access sensitive data, the Washington Post reported.

She has been replaced by Leland Dudek, a Social Security official who has supported DOGE’s anti-fraud/anti-waste efforts, the report added. He will lead the administration until Frank Bisignano, Fiserv’s CEO and President Trump’s nominee to head Social Security, is confirmed by the Senate, the Post added.

While it was not clear what data DOGE wanted to access, the Social Security Administration has every Social Security number that has ever been issued, the work, pay history and banking info of millions of Americans, and medical records for people seeking disability benefits.

News of King’s departure came the day after Musk claimed on X to have uncovered “the greatest fraud in history,” sharing a chart showing more than 20 million people in the Social Security database who were more than 100 years old.

Musk was in fact sharing information long known to the Social Security Administration’s auditors, who found that while there were that many century-plus old people in the agency’s records, hardly any of them were collecting benefits. Rather, these were people who died and whose deaths were never reported to the government.

Other observers have pointed out that a lot of Social Security numbers for people over 100 were being used by undocumented migrants who needed a phony Social Security number to gain employment. These are people paying into the system, but not collecting benefits.

The Social Security Administration is the latest target in DOGE’s cost-cutting crusade. The weeks-old group has also recently sought access to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) system that is typically not available to political appointees such as Musk.

The Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), which allows employees to access IRS accounts and bank information, has historically not even been available to the IRS commissioner or the national taxpayer advocate.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are investigating the recent decision by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to permit DOGE to access government payment systems.