Elon Musk listens as reporters ask U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions during a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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Sen. Jeanne Shaheen urged President Donald Trump on Wednesday to require billionaire Elon Musk and special government employees of his DOGE project to certify before leaving government service that they cannot use for personal benefit any non-public government data they gained access to.
Shaheen, D-N.H., in a letter to Trump, noted that the Tesla CEO Musk and DOGE employees have “unprecedented” access to “vast swathes of some of the most sensitive U.S. government data” across a broad range of federal agencies.
DOGE, whose employees include veterans of Musk’s companies, has reportedly accessed data in the Social Security Administration, the Treasury Department, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and several others, the letter said.
Her letter was first reported by NBC News.
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has, at Trump’s behest, slashed or sought to eliminate federal agencies, their personnel and other resources.
The agencies targeted include ones that are tasked with regulatory oversight of Musk’s companies.
“I am very concerned that SGEs [special government employees], many of whom come from the tech field, may return to the private sector and use nonpublic information from the federal government to give their personal business activities an unfair and anticompetitive boost,” Shaheen wrote Trump.
U.S. Senator and Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is seen during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on March 4, 2025.
Craig Hudson | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The letter noted that Steve Bannon, the right-wing provocateur who served as a top White House advisor to Trump in his first stint in office, “shares my concern.”
“According to a recent report: ‘Bannon also said he wants a letter of certification showing that no one has taken any data from the Trump administration or government, to which Semafor’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith asked, “Sounds like you don’t trust [Musk] not to take data?” “Trust, but verify,” Bannon responded.’ ” Shaheen wrote.
A senior White House official called the senator’s letter “pointless.”
The official added in a statement to NBC that “SGEs are already required to abide by executive branch ethics rules including the rules relating to misuse of position or other government resources or information.”
Musk, who is the world’s wealthiest person, was Trump’s biggest financial backer in the 2024 elections.
He runs a portfolio of businesses that include electric vehicle maker Tesla, and the aerospace and defense contractor SpaceX, which includes Starlink, a satellite-based wireless internet service.
His newest venture, xAI, develops artificial intelligence models and products, such as the AI chatbot Grok, which require huge amounts of training data.
xAI recently merged with X, the social media company previously known as Twitter.
Musk’s 130-day term limit as a special government employee is rapidly approaching, as is that of some of his DOGE staffers.
While some DOGE staffers are poised to take longer-term government jobs, others may soon move to the private sector. That has raised questions about the protection of sensitive data and systems they accessed during their tenure at DOGE.
X is already in hot water with Canada’s privacy watchdog, which is investigating whether the company used personal data to train Grok without users’ consent.
Musk has claimed that DOGE saved money for the federal government.
But a New York Times analysis and others have found that DOGE and Musk have repeatedly overstated the impact of their work.
The Partnership of Public Service estimated that DOGE could cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year, due in part to the cost of firing and putting workers on paid leave, and also because of the rehiring of terminated employees whose talents are still needed.
In an interview Tuesday with CNBC anchor David Faber, Musk said that DOGE will have reduced the federal government’s spending by $160 billion from 2025 to 2026, which he characterized as “16% of the way towards a trillion in five months.”
Musk and DOGE initially aimed to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. But they later walked that goal back to $1 trillion.
