Government IT whistleblower calls out DOGE, says he was threatened at home

NLRB denies breach

Berulis’ disclosure said that several days before receiving this threat, he had been instructed to drop his investigation and not report his concerns to US security officials.

Bakaj’s letter to senators and the Office of Special Counsel requested “that both law enforcement agencies and Congress initiate an immediate investigation into the cybersecurity breach and data exfiltration at NLRB and any other agencies where DOGE has accessed internal systems.”

An NLRB spokesperson denied that there was any breach. “Tim Bearese, the NLRB’s acting press secretary, denied that the agency granted DOGE access to its systems and said DOGE had not requested access to the agency’s systems,” according to NPR. “Bearese said the agency conducted an investigation after Berulis raised his concerns but ‘determined that no breach of agency systems occurred.'”

When contacted by Ars, the NLRB did not give any direct response to the whistleblower allegations. The agency did provide an email sent to staff Wednesday evening on behalf of Acting General Counsel William Cowen and Chairman Marvin Kaplan. The email said the NLRB “had no official contact with any DOGE personnel” prior to this week, but met with DOGE representatives on Wednesday morning.

“At this morning’s meeting, we met with three DOGE representatives after they completed all security check-ins required of any visitor to the agency,” the email said. “We explained the Agency’s important mission, discussed our organizational structure, and praised our dedicated staff and the invaluable public service you provide. Two DOGE representatives will be detailed to the agency from GSA part-time for several months. We understand they will be at headquarters occasionally, but most work will be performed remotely. The representatives have requested information about agency operations but asked us to remove any personally identifiable information from documents we provide. Consistent with the President’s Executive Order and applicable laws, the Agency will comply with DOGE’s requests for access and information.”

There have been numerous lawsuits over the access to government systems granted to DOGE, the Trump administration entity led by Elon Musk. One such lawsuit described DOGE’s access as “the largest and most consequential data breach in US history.” There have been mixed results in the cases so far; a US appeals court decided last week that DOGE can access personal data held by the US Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), overturning a lower-court ruling.

After the whistleblower disclosure, US Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) sent a letter urging inspectors general at the NLRB and Department of Labor to investigate. Connolly said the whistleblower report indicates “that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees may be engaged in technological malfeasance and illegal activity at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Department of Labor (DOL).” Connolly asked for a report to Congress on “the nature of the work the DOGE team has performed at NLRB and DOL, including any and all attempts to exfiltrate data and any attempts to cover up their activities.”

Because of Musk’s role at DOGE and the fact that his “companies face a series of enforcement actions from NLRB and DOL,” there is “an inherent conflict of interest for him to direct any work at either agency—let alone benefit from stolen nonpublic information,” Connolly wrote.

Login attempts from Russia

Berulis’ disclosure said that on March 11, internal metrics indicated there had been “abnormal usage” over the past week with higher-than-usual response times and “increased network output above anywhere it had been historically.” When examining the data, “we noticed a user with an IP address in Primorsky Krai, Russia started trying to log in. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming,” he wrote.