DOGE Staff Election Contacts Flagged by Justice Department - Regulatory Spotlight Intensifies

Regulators just threw a spotlight on crypto's political entanglements—and the beam landed squarely on Dogecoin's doorstep.

The Uncomfortable Intersection

When Justice Department officials start tracking election-related contacts, the financial world pays attention. Add cryptocurrency staff to that equation, and you've got a recipe for regulatory scrutiny that makes traditional compliance departments break out in cold sweats. It's the kind of overlap that turns routine oversight into front-page financial drama.

Pattern Recognition

Watchdogs aren't just noting isolated incidents—they're mapping connections. Each flagged contact becomes a data point in a larger narrative about influence, access, and the blurred lines between digital asset advocacy and political maneuvering. The process reveals more about systemic intersections than any single transaction ever could.

The Compliance Calculus

For crypto firms, every political conversation now carries weighted variables: regulatory risk, public perception, and that ever-present volatility multiplier. What passes as normal lobbying in traditional finance suddenly looks different when blockchain transparency meets election-cycle sensitivity. The rules aren't just different—they're being written in real-time.

Market Mechanics

Nothing moves digital asset prices like regulatory uncertainty with a side of political intrigue. The mere existence of flagged contacts creates narrative friction that affects trading patterns, investor confidence, and those delicate network effects crypto projects depend on. It's fundamental analysis meets political risk assessment—with real-time price discovery as the scoreboard.

The Transparency Paradox

Blockchain's greatest strength—permanent, public record-keeping—becomes its most awkward feature when every interaction faces government scrutiny. What the crypto community celebrates as open governance, regulators view as potential evidence. The same technology that enables trustless transactions creates perfectly auditable trails of who talked to whom, when.

Because nothing says 'decentralized revolution' like having your staff's meeting schedule become Justice Department exhibit A—the ultimate proof that in finance, some traditions (like regulatory attention) remain beautifully, frustratingly centralized.

Justice Department flags election-related contacts by DOGE staff

Elizabeth Shapiro, a senior DOJ official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for possible Hatch Act violations. The law bars federal workers from using their jobs for political purposes. Elizabeth wrote that the two employees were in contact with an advocacy group pushing to overturn election results in specific states.

The filing said one of the two signed a Voter Data Agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to compare federal records with state voter rolls.

Elizabeth said the agreement and the outside communications were not known to SSA leadership at the time earlier court statements were made. She wrote that SSA believed its prior claims about DOGE, focusing on fraud detection and technology upgrades, were accurate when stated.

Elizabeth also said there is no evidence that SSA staff outside the involved DOGE members knew about the advocacy group or the voter-related agreement. She added that the two employees and the advocacy group were not named in the filing.

Emails reviewed by the DOJ suggest DOGE staff could have been asked to help the group by accessing SSA data to match against voter lists, but it remains unclear if any data was actually shared.

Unapproved servers expose how DOGE handled restricted SSA data

Elizabeth also disclosed that Steve Davis, a senior adviser to Musk tied to the DOGE project, was copied on a March 3, 2025, email that included a password-protected file.

The file contained private information on about 1,000 people pulled from Social Security systems.

Elizabeth said it is unknown whether Steve accessed the file. She also said the current SSA staff cannot open the file to confirm exactly what it contains.

SSA continues to say DOGE never had access to official systems of record. Elizabeth wrote that it remains possible that restricted data derived from SSA systems was sent to Steve. That detail was included as part of the DOJ’s corrections to earlier court testimony.

The filing also said a DOGE team member briefly received access to private Social Security profiles even after a court order blocked that access. Elizabeth said the access was never used.

In a separate case, another DOGE member had access for two months to a call center profile containing private information, and Elizabeth wrote that it is still unknown whether any private data was accessed during that period.

According to her, DOGE staff also shared data links using Cloudflare, a third-party service not approved for SSA data storage, meaning it falls outside any security rules.

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