Agency data shared by DOGE online sparks concern among intelligence community
ABC News
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has sparked concerns within the intelligence community after it posted information about an agency that oversees U.S. intelligence satellites to its newly launched government website.
The DOGE website, updated earlier this week to include information about the federal workforce across agencies, contained details about the headcount and budget for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency responsible for designing and maintaining U.S. intelligence satellites, according to a review by ABC News.
Multiple intelligence community sources told ABC News that this likely represents a significant breach.
John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, said that anytime any details about U.S. citizens working for one of the intel agencies is released, it puts their safety in jeopardy.
A former CIA official who served on classification review boards called the incident a “significant” breach, “particularly if it involves the budget and personnel of the NRO,” adding that “it could be even more significant if it involves declassifying sensitive information under executive authority.”
Mick Mulroy, an ABC News national security and defense analyst and a former CIA officer, said “I do not know whether classified information has been publicly disclosed but there are several reasons that the size, budget, and of course names of those in the intelligence community should not be publicly disclosed.”
“Our adversaries want to collect as much information as they can to determine what we are doing, how we are doing, the extent of our investment in intelligence collection and of course the identity of those involved so the can be targeted for intelligence purposes,” Mulroy said.
HuffPost was first to report the information on DOGE’s website.
Following the publication of this report, a Trump administration official told ABC News, “DOGE is sharing OPM data from under the Biden administration. The headcount for this agency has been publicly available on OPM’s website. This is the same intelligence community that wrote in a letter that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Their lack of credibility is not up for debate.”
The bottom of the DOGE.GOV page states, “Workforce data excludes Military, Postal Service, White House, intelligence agencies, and others.”
(WASHINGTON) — Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee want the Justice Department to preserve all records related to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Donald Trump, in addition to all existing and future records related to the department’s investigations and prosecutions of efforts to interfere with the transfer of power following Trump’s 2020 election loss, they wrote Monday in a letter to the DOJ obtained by ABC News.
Trump has vowed to shut down all ongoing investigations into his dealings upon returning to the Oval Office later this month. The letter, addressed to current Attorney General Merrick Garland and signed by all Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, comes just one week before Trump’s inauguration.
“As President-elect Trump has repeatedly made clear, he intends to swiftly shut down any investigations related to his alleged misconduct and involvement in 2020 election subversion efforts and his mishandling of classified documents,” Democrats wrote in the letter. They said the Department must take “immediate” steps to preserve documents “in light of these threats.”
Smith, who investigated Trump over allegations of interfering with the 2020 election and his alleged unlawful retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, formally resigned as special counsel last week after submitting his final report on the probes to Garland.
The release of Smith’s final report on the two cases has been the subject of a recent court battle as Trump and lawyers for his former co-defendants have attempted to block the public release of the report. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents case, ruled that DOJ can release Volume One of Smith’s report, covering his election interference case against Trump — but is reserving ruling on whether the DOJ can make Volume Two, on the classified documents case, available to congressional leadership for review.
In their letter Monday, Democrats on the committee said they want to ensure that they can later request access to the report if merited.
“The Committee recognizes the current injunction against the release of Special Counsel Smith’s report and related materials and reserves its right to request production of the report and relevant records at an appropriate future date,” they wrote.
The letter to Garland also comes just days before the Judiciary Committee is slated to consider former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s nomination to serve as the new attorney general, after Trump selected her for the role following former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration.
Bondi has long been a fixture in Trump’s orbit, allying herself with Trump early in his political ascension and later serving as the chairwoman of a think tank set up by former Trump staffers after Trump’s first term in office. She defended Trump during his first impeachment trial in the Senate, and has been vocally critical of many of the cases that the Department of Justice has pursued against Trump, including those whose records Democrats now hope to preserve.
“The President-elect’s intended nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has promised to weaponize the Department of Justice against those who were involved in these investigations, threatening: ‘When Republicans take back the White House… [t]he Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted–the bad ones. The investigators will be Investigated,'” Democrats wrote in their letter. “In light of these threats, it is critical that the Department take immediate preservation steps related to these investigations and prosecutions.”
Democrats in their letter reminded the Justice Department of its legal responsibility to preserve all documents, whether physical or electronic, as the transition process continues.
ABC News has reached out to the Justice Department and Trump transition team for comment.
Trump pleaded not guilty in 2023 to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information. He also pleaded not guilty in 2023 to separate charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in an effort to subvert democracy and remain in power.
Both cases were dismissed following Trump’s reelection in November due to a longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
The J. Edgar Hoover building, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters/ Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has ordered that the FBI must release some records related to its investigation of President Donald Trump’s handling of presidential records that have been sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In a memorandum opinion issued Monday, Judge Beryl Howell wrote, “Given the current circumstances and legal landscape—including that President Trump now enjoys absolute and presumptive immunity from criminal liability, the government has dismissed criminal charges against President Trump and … and no pending or even contemplated criminal enforcement action within the applicable statute of limitations on the topics of responsive records is at all likely,” the exemptions the FBI cited to block the release of information no longer apply.
Exactly three years ago, on Feb. 10, 2022, Axios reported that New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman’s then-upcoming book, “Confidence Man,” included a claim that White House staff “periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging” the presidential toilet.
Trump issued a statement calling the story “another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book.” (A footnote in Howell’s opinion notes, “In August of 2022, Haberman released photos of notes at the bottom of two toilets, and, according to her sources, one photo was allegedly of a White House toilet while the other toilet was overseas.”)
Eight days later, on Feb. 18, 2022, a letter from the National Archives described how President Trump allegedly brought classified records to his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago after losing the 2020 election.
This kicked off a high-stakes legal fight to return the records to government control and would eventually lead to an FBI search of Trump’s residence. What came next were felony charges and a series of stunning legal and political victories that would propel Trump back into office and make the charges he faced effectively disappear.
But as questions swirled around the February 2022 allegations of mishandling of records by Trump, Bloomberg News reporter Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for six categories of documents. The first five categories pertained to documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, but the sixth category requested information about any records mentioning “Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were destroyed and … allegedly flushed down the toilet.”
The FBI argued they were exempt from responding to the request about the Mar-a-Lago investigation citing possible harm that could come to a prosecution and issued a so-called “Glomar” response to part six of the request, meaning the FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of records about alleged toilet documents.
The term Glomar is a reference to a secret CIA operation during the Cold War to raise a lost Soviet submarine from the ocean floor — when details of the operation began to leak the government provided a response that neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the operation.
Some of the information from the Mar-a-Lago investigation files was eventually released but the sixth category has remained secret.
The landmark Trump immunity case that held a president is presumptively immune from criminal prosecution for official acts and his election victory which brought a dismissal to the case had the effect of wiping away the constraints that had permitted the FBI to withhold records under FOIA.
Howell writes, “somewhat ironically, the constitutional and procedural safeguards attached to the criminal process include significant confidentiality mechanisms,” but for an immune president, such protections, “may simply be unavailable, as it is here.”
“The FBI’s Glomar response is improper, and the categorical withholding of the responsive records contained within the Mar-a-Lago investigative file is insupportable where, as here, no pending law enforcement proceeding exists, or can be reasonably anticipated, and the Mar-a-Lago investigation has been iced,” Howell writes.
No records were released immediately in the case, but the parties must submit a joint status report in 10 days to propose a schedule to conclude this case. It is unclear if the government will seek an appeal to block any further release.
(WASHINGTON) — Before a judge halted the takeover in February, President Donald Trump’s administration was planning to fire the overwhelming majority of employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and then fulfill the agency’s legal obligations with a skeleton crew, a top CFPB official testified on Monday.
During a lengthy court hearing on Monday, CFPB’s Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez gave a full sworn account of the chaos and confusion that has consumed the federal agency that was set up to protect the public from unfair corporate practices ever since the Department of Government Efficiency and Trump administration officials moved to dismantle it.
His testimony provided a window into what is happening internally as DOGE spearheads Trump’s mandate to slash the federal government.
“Absent the temporary restraining order, the majority of the CFPB employees would have been terminated?” a lawyer representing the plaintiffs asked Martinez.
“The majority, yes,” Martinez said, adding the remaining employees would have been fired in later phases of the takeover.
Throughout his six-hour testimony, Martinez described the back-and-forth that played out in recent weeks among acting CFPB Director Russ Vought, DOGE, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget. Officials toggled between halting and partially reinstating the agency’s work as they hastily slashed it and then scrambled to put pieces back in place to comply with law – in some cases losing key data and services along the way.
“I was having a hard time processing what was happening,” Martinez said, describing the early days of DOGE’s takeover of CFPB.
“So is it fair to say that there’s thought going into it, but only after? It’s like, shoot first and ask questions later?” Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked, after Martinez described how the agency was forced to cancel numerous critical contracts but rescinded some of those terminations soon after. Martinez agreed.
The hearing also shed light on the unique relationship between DOGE representatives and career civil servants, with Martinez frequently calling DOGE representatives the newly installed leaders of the CFPB.
“I don’t understand, why are you using them with leadership to refer to DOGE unless you had been told that DOGE was now your leadership,” asked Judge Jackson.
“They were designated as senior advisers, ma’am,” Martinez said.
“Senior leaders of the CFPB,” Judge Jackson asked.
“Correct,” Martinez said.
Martinez recalled everything from DOGE representatives’ first arrival at CFPB’s office in the first week of February — and the acting director’s email ordering CFPB employees to stop working — to the immediate chaos that ensued, as well as efforts by him and other career officials at CFPB to figure out what has been terminated and how to reinstate critical functions of the agency.
“There were a couple of high-priority issues that would have been devastating had it stopped,” Martinez said at one point.
“I was very, very concerned about the Consumer Response Center going down,” Martinez said, explaining potential backlash that could occur if those systems halted. He said he eventually coordinated a discussion between the head of that unit and DOGE’s representatives to “help them understand why his program was so important.”
On March 2, after much confusion and frustration as to what type of work CFPB was authorized to perform, OMB’s General Counsel Mark Paoletta, who has been representing Vought, eventually sent a letter directing CFPB employees to perform statutorily required duties.
But even after some units were told to return to work, they continued experiencing challenges — including loss of personnel and access to files of those who have left, according to accounts showcased during the hearing.
Jackson acknowledged the extraordinary situation workers at CFPB are facing, and she asked a series of questions to the witness.
“Would you say that sending out an order that says ‘Do no work’ is typical?” Judge Jackson asked.
“No,” Martinez responded.
“Would you say that canceling all the contracts before the analysis as to whether these are duplicative, worthwhile, not worthwhile, is typical?” the judge also asked.
“No,” Martinez again responded.
“Would you say that firing all probationary employees and two-year employees from the get-go is typical?” the judge asked.
“No,” Martinez responded.
“Would you say that trying to implement a brief without notice before the new director is even put in place, is typical?” the judge continued.
“No,” Martinez again replied.
“And would you say putting the rest of the employees on administrative leave with an order to do no work is typical?” the judge asked.
“No,” Martinez responded.
Jackson is considering issuing a preliminary injunction to effectively halt the breakdown of the CFPB, which she temporarily stopped last week. During Monday’s hearing, Martinez was grilled about emails that he had produced wherein he discussed carrying out the mass terminations despite the court’s order.
“You said that, in some ways, the delay was a blessing, because it gave you more time to figure out how to accomplish this wide-scale termination, right?” a lawyer asked.
“Yes,” Martinez said.
“And so you conveyed things like, there really isn’t going to be a CFPB now, right?” the lawyer continued.
“When you’re ripping out a number of people and functions, yes,” Martinez said.
