OPM off personnel mgmt

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estb 1 25 bit belated

see DOGE COUP

MERRI OK

wiki

White House Presidential Personnel Office

On November 13, 2024, Semafor reported that Trump had offered Gor the position of director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office during his second presidency.^[13] Gor assumed the role on January 20, 2025, and implemented loyalty tests to ensure political appointees supported Trump's agenda and had not donated to Democrats.^[12] At the end of February 2025, Politico reported that Gor was among White House employees frustrated by Elon Musk's lack of consultation with the personnel office regarding decisions for the Department of Government Efficiency.^[14]

Gor played a significant role in the withdrawal of Jared Isaacman's nomination to lead NASA in June 2025. Isaacman, a tech billionaire and associate of Elon Musk, had been approved by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation with a 19-9 vote on April 30, 2025, and was expected to secure strong Senate support.^[12] However, Gor lobbied against the nomination, highlighting Isaacman's past donations to Democrats, which led to Trump withdrawing the nomination, citing "prior associations" after a review.^[12][15] The decision contributed to tensions between Trump and Musk, with Gor's influence cited as a factor in their public falling out.^[12]

Gor is a frequent presence at Mar-a-Lago and maintains a close relationship with former Marvel executive Isaac Perlmutter, a major Trump donor and ally.^[12]

In June 2025 media revealed Gor hasn't gone through security clearance process and pointed out inconsistencies in the details of his biography.^[16] Subsequently security researcher Brian Krebs revealed that Gor's email account used a password identical to those used by Russian national Sergey Anatolyevich Goryachev, born on November 20, 1980, in Saratov, Russia, for his own email accounts, which were registered in Russia.

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wired doxxed?

judd 2 25

Several of Elon Musk’s associates installed at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have received unprecedented access to federal human resources databases containing sensitive personal information for millions of federal employees. According to two members of OPM staff with direct knowledge, the Musk team running OPM has the ability to extract information from databases that store medical histories, personally identifiable information, workplace evaluations, and other private data. The staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared professional retaliation. Musk Watch also reviewed internal OPM correspondence confirming that expansive access to the database was provided to Musk associates.

The arrangement presents acute privacy and security risks, one of the OPM staffers said.

Among the government outsiders granted entry to the OPM databases is University of California Berkeley student Akash Bobba, a software engineer who graduated high school less than three years ago. He previously interned at Meta and Palantir, a technology firm chaired by Musk-ally and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel. Edward Coristine, another 2022 high school graduate and former software engineering intern at Musk’s Neuralink, has also been given access to the databases.

Other Musk underlings embedded at OPM following President Donald Trump’s inauguration include the agency’s new chief of staff, Amanda Scales, who until January was a human resources staffer at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, and Brian Bjelde, who has spent the past 21 years at Musk's SpaceX, including the last 10 leading the human resources department. They are joined by Gavin Kliger, a former Twitter software engineer serving as a special advisor to the director of OPM, and Riccardo Biasini, a former software engineer at Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company.

OPM did not respond to a request for comment.

Shortly after Trump took office, OPM installed Greg Hogan to serve as its new chief information officer (CIO). Hogan was tapped to replace OPM CIO Melvin Brown, who had accepted the job less than a month ago.

The civil servants who oversee the OPM’s information technology services were then instructed to provide access to Musk's associates, according to the OPM staffers who spoke to Musk Watch. One of the OPM staffers received an email from the agency’s new leadership instructing them to give Musk’s team “access [to] the system as an admin user" and "code read and write permissions."

“They have access to the code itself, which means they can make updates to anything that they want,” the staffer explained.

USAJOBS, the federal government’s official hiring site, was one of the systems that Musk's associates were given access to. The database stores personal information — Social Security numbers, home addresses, employment records — provided by private individuals who have applied for federal jobs, regardless of whether the applicants went on to work for the government.

Musk’s aides were also given access to the OPM’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) system. Contained within the EHRI are the Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salaries, home addresses, and job descriptions of all civil government workers, along with any disciplinary actions they have faced. “They’re looking through all the position descriptions… to remove folks,” one of the OPM staffers said of Musk’s team. “This is how they found all these DEI offices and had them removed — [by] reviewing position description level data.”

Other databases Musk’s team has access to include USA Staffing, an onboarding system; USA Performance, a job performance review site; and HI, which the government uses to manage employee health care. “The health insurance one scares me because it's HIPAA [protected] information, but they have access to all this stuff,” the OPM staffer noted.

A former OPM director, who spoke to Musk Watch on the condition that they not be mentioned by name, agreed with the staffer’s concerns. “What [Musk is] doing will put so many government employees at risk. It’s not at all what the office is intended for,” said the former OPM director. “I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

There are also potential security risks. “China and Russia are literally trying to hack us every day and we just gave all this data over to somebody that's not been properly vetted,” one of the OPM staffers said. “It's not just Amanda Scales, it's all the [political appointees] in that office right now. So it's multiple vulnerability points.” Outside actors have already gained access to some of the massive email lists that OPM created as part of Musk's effort to convince federal employees to resign.

A new server being used to control these databases has been placed in a conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center, according to an OPM staffer. The staffer described the server as a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process.

There is a legal requirement that the installation of a new server undergo a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), a formal process to ensure the change would not create any security vulnerabilities. But in this instance, the staff believes there was no PIA. “So this application and corresponding hardware are illegally operating,” they added.

On Friday, Reuters reported that some senior civil servants have been blocked from accessing the EHRI and other OPM systems, making it difficult for career OPM employees to know what Musk’s team has been examining or modifying. In the same report, the outlet revealed the team had moved sofa beds into the agency's headquarters to continue their work around the clock.

Upon gaining access to the OPM databases last week, Musk used the agency to email all federal civil employees simultaneously. The email announced a “deferred resignation” program, claiming that any federal employee who wished to resign effective September 30, 2025, would receive pay and benefits until that date and would not have to show up for work except in rare cases. Musk and the White House falsely described the offer as a "buyout" or "severance." The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, has condemned the program, saying it “will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.”

Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars bankrolling Trump’s election campaign, is not a federal employee or a congressionally confirmed member of the Trump administration. His vast and growing powers in Washington stem from Trump choosing him to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, itself a successor to the U.S. Digital Service. In the past, the Digital Service had a relatively narrow mandate, serving primarily to maintain websites and technology systems used by the federal government.

Musk’s influence now extends to the U,S. Treasury Department, where he and his team took over the federal government’s enormous payment system despite the protests of a top career official who has since been forced out. Over the weekend, Musk said he would use his access to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal grants.

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Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation reacted with shock Monday to reports that a team led by Trump administration-empowered Elon Musk had infiltrated sensitive data and financial systems overseen by multiple federal government agencies.

Several of the members said Musk’s actions are illegal and promised to oppose them, though they offered few details on how they would check him.

“My constituents are terrified and feel that this is an immense breach of privacy,” U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, said in a statement. “We cannot allow an unelected billionaire to access the most sensitive information, and I will not stand idly by while Trump does nothing to lower everyday costs for Denverites or the American people.”

After he was elected president in November, Donald Trump assigned Musk, the world’s richest person and a Trump megadonor, to lead a new White House entity, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

In recent days, Musk deputies gained access, in the face of resistance by a senior career civil servant, to a Treasury Department system that handles federal government payments worth trillions of dollars. Data in the system includes personal information about millions of Americans who receive Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds and other federal payments. They also shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was established as an independent entity by Congress. It manages projects and distributes funds in about 130 countries and is credited with generating international goodwill toward the U.S. The Musk team also reportedly locked civil servants out of systems at the Office of Personnel Management, potentially compromising the data of millions of federal employees.

“This is an unprecedented abuse of power by a dangerous, unelected, and unhinged person,” U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Lakewood Democrat, said in a statement to Newsline. “Americans shouldn’t have to worry that an unelected billionaire could stop payments to lifesaving programs all so he can further enrich himself and further his own self-interest at our expense.”

Joe Neguse of Lafayette, the assistant minority leader in the U.S. House, said, “The President does not have the authority to eliminate statutorily authorized agencies, impound funds lawfully appropriated by the Congress, or to give unfettered access to core government financial payment and personnel systems to his billionaire campaign donors. These actions are dangerous, reckless and unlawful.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which has Treasury Department oversight responsibilities. In a social media post Monday, Bennet wrote, “Reports of meddling in important Treasury payment systems is incredibly dangerous and risks severe damage to our country and economy. I will be pushing for answers alongside my colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Windsor, however, expressed support for Musk’s actions. In a social media post Sunday, she wrote, referring to USAID, “America is tired of being the world’s ATM. We need to take care of our own people first.”

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. SUPPORT

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.

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REF

NO LNX

Vittoria Elliott

Politics

Feb 2, 2025

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

Wired Staff;

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.

Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

Got a Tip?

Are you a current or former employee with the Office of Personnel Management or another government agency impacted by Elon Musk? We’d like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact Vittoria Elliott at vittoria_elliott@wired.com or securely at velliott88.18 on Signal.

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”

Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer and Tim Marchman.

You Might Also Like …

Our latest scoop reveals the young, inexperienced engineers aiding Elon Musk’s government takeover

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The unglamorous but key federal office that sent out a mass "deferred resignation" offer to federal employees on Tuesday has reportedly been taken over by people with ties to Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a close confidant of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Citing unnamed sources, Wiredreported Tuesday that "the highest ranks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—essentially the human resources function for the entire federal government—are now controlled by people with connections to Musk and to the tech industry." Musk reportedly visited OPM headquarters late last week.

Wired, which described the individuals as "Musk lackeys," declined to name some of the newly installed OPM officials because of their ages. One of the officials "was set to start college last fall," and another "is a 21-year-old whose online résumé touts his work for Palantir, the government contractor and analytics firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel."

Among the officials the outlet names are Riccardo Biasini, a former Tesla engineer who is now a senior adviser to the OPM director, and Amanda Scales, who previously worked at xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company. Scales is now chief of staff at OPM, which is currently led by Acting Director Charles Ezell.

A since-deleted Reddit post purportedly authored by an OPM employee describes Ezell as "the friendliest 'yes man' you'll ever meet."

"I've been an OPM employee for nearly a decade and a federal employee for almost 20 years. I've never witnessed anything even remotely close to what's happening right now. In short, there's a hostile takeover of the federal civil service," the post stated. "It's clear they pushed aside all the high-level nonpolitical civil servants who refused to do Donald Trump's bidding, until they found Chuck [Ezell]."

"The 'Fork in the Road' email had the same title as one that Elon Musk sent to Twitter when he took over there, informing workers to be 'extremely hardcore' or take the resignation offer."

The heavy presence of Musk allies and associates at OPM further entrenches the influence of the mega-billionaire inside the Trump administration, which has moved swiftly—and unlawfully—to purge the federal workforce and exert control over funding approved by Congress.

The American Prospect's David Dayen noted Wednesday that the email OPM sent to federal employees earlier this week offering full pay and benefits through September for all workers who opt to resign was "an Elon Musk operation, through and through."

"In fact, the 'Fork in the Road' email had the same title as one that Elon Musk sent to Twitter when he took over there, informing workers to be 'extremely hardcore' or take the resignation offer," Dayen wrote. "The Twitter emails even included the same ask of workers to reply with their decision."

"This is alternately questionably legal, potentially a bait and switch, dubiously effective as a budget-reducer, maybe even a budget-buster, and definitively harrowing for two million workers being subjected to a misery-inducing campaign for the sport of the world's richest man," Dayen added.

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AN 1 25

During the 2024 U.S. presidential race, now-President Donald Trump made a concerted effort to distance himself from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's 922-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency. Trump reportedly viewed Project 2025 as a major political liability, claiming he had nothing to do with it even though its architects were major allies.

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris hammered Trump aggressively on Project 2025, and her website even had an entire section devoted to the Heritage document and its proposals. Harris, in an October 14, 2024 post on X, formerly Twitter, wrote, "Donald Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda would give him unchecked power to act on his worst instincts — and there will be no one to stop him."

Regardless, Trump narrowly won the election, returning to the White House on January 20, 2025. And according to reporting from 404 Media, some memos from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) "were seemingly written by people" with Project 2025 connections. But the OPM, Mediaite's David Gilmour reports, "scrambled to scrub" those memos.

404 Media's Samanta Cole, in an article published on January 27, reported, "Some of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memos sent to federal workers about firing, hiring freezes, and mandatory return to office demands were seemingly written by people who were previously employed by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks with longstanding loyalties to President Donald Trump, according to metadata on the memos posted by the government online. We know this because the senders of the memos failed to scrub the metadata from those documents, making it easy for anyone to reveal the listed authors of the memos."

But Gilmour, in an article published on January 28, reports that the OPM "scrambled to scrub" the memos "after initial publication of the documents contained metadata revealing they were authored by individuals tied to Project 2025."

"The metadata revealed the authors' identities as individuals affiliated with the Heritage Foundation think tank's Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for reshaping federal governance, according to 404 Media," Gilmour explains. "One memo, titled 'Guidance on Presidential Memorandum Return to In-Person Work' and dated January 24, listed its author as Noah Peters, a senior advisor at OPM and former Trump appointee who served as solicitor for the Federal Labor Relations Authority during Trump's first term."

Gilmour adds, "Another memo, 'Federal Civilian Hiring Freeze Guidance,' was authored by James Sherk, who 404 Media highlights as an architect of the Trump Administration's Schedule F classification, which stripped employment protections from federal workers."

Sherk, according to Gilmour, was "formerly" active in the Heritage Foundation.

"Despite Trump's public denials of involvement with Project 2025 and distancing from the blueprint," Gilmour reports, "the metadata leak is the latest evidence of how he has tapped its contributors for high-ranking roles. Although the OPM deleted the initial documents before uploading amended ones, tech industry researcher Molly White has hosted the original memos on her website in full."

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