Mary Trump, the estranged niece of President Donald Trump, has leveled serious allegations against her uncle and entrepreneur Elon Musk.
She claims that the duo has transformed a clandestine federal agency into an instrument of authoritarian control. She has labeled the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), as "illegal" and "unconstitutional."
In a recent post on Substack, Mary Trump asserted that DOGE was established with the sole purpose of granting Musk and Trump access to confidential information. She stated, "to make sure Elon Musk and Donald Trump have access to our information in a way that makes them both incredibly powerful and beyond the reach of accountability while endangering our personal safety and financial security."
Mary Trump has been a vocal critic of her uncle for a considerable period. In 2020, she authored a revealing book about the Trump family, in which she declared that the president is "utterly incapable of leading this country and it's dangerous to allow him to do so."
According to Newsweek, DOGE, which is staffed by Musk's allies, has been embroiled in controversy following a whistleblower report that exposed the theft of approximately 10 gigabytes of sensitive data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by its employees.
Mary Trump, in her Substack post, stated, "Sociopaths cannot create; they can only destroy," adding that "Anybody paying attention knows that DOGE...has been a disaster since the day this...agency was created."
She referenced a report by NPR, where whistleblower Daniel Berulis revealed that DOGE agents demanded unrestricted access to NLRB servers. CNN anchor Jake Tapper summarized the report, stating that DOGE operatives "not only accessed data... but also took a substantial amount of sensitive data."
The NLRB is responsible for maintaining records related to union activities, corporate investigations, and confidential labor disputes.
Andrew Bakage, Berulis' attorney, informed NPR that foreign intrusion occurred almost immediately after DOGE employees created user accounts. He said, "Within 15 minutes of DOGE employees creating user accounts...someone or something from Russia tried to log in with the right usernames and right passwords," Bakage said. "That happened over 20 times."
Mary Trump also revealed that Berulis received a threat after attempting to raise concerns internally. She said, "someone physically tap[ed] a threatening note to his door" containing personal data and drone surveillance images of him walking his dog.
In her post, Mary Trump accused DOGE of repurposing databases from agencies like Housing and Urban Development, the Social Security Administration, and the IRS to track immigrants. She alleged that DOGE "is now reportedly using HUD data to identify undocumented immigrants and then sharing those data with the Department of Homeland Security."
She further claimed that the Social Security Office had facilitated the revocation of work permits for over 6,300 undocumented immigrants, while the IRS had agreed to share tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Natanya Broer, a senior counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, stated, "It's not only about one subgroup of people. It's really about all of us," adding that "Everyone cares about their privacy. Nobody wants their healthcare information or tax information broadcast and used to go after us."
Mary Trump linked DOGE's tactics to a wider attack on government accountability and democratic values. She wrote, "The Trump regime in general and DOGE in particular are antithetical" to the idea of a government that serves the public.
Following the NPR report, Representative Gerry Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has called for an investigation into DOGE's access to the National Labor Relations Board after revelations that sensitive data was removed from the agency.
Neither Trump nor Musk has responded to the allegations from NPR or Mary Trump.
Daniel Berulis, the whistleblower, in an interview with NPR, said, "I can't attest to what their end goal was or what they're doing with the data."
Representative Gerry Connolly, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to the acting Inspector General at the Department of Labor and to the Inspector General at the NLRB, "During its short existence, DOGE has established a track record of extreme negligence and an alarmingly cavalier attitude with respect to protecting Americans' sensitive data."
Trump's DOGE initiative was launched via executive order on his first day back in office and is set to sunset in July 2026. After Musk's departure, Cabinet secretaries are expected to continue the department's work.
Login