Elon Musk is threatening to fire federal employees who leak information as he and President Donald Trump unleash unprecedented chaos on the government.
On Sunday, a user posted an anonymous “operational security reminder” on Reddit’s FBI forum with advice for sharing information so it can’t be traced back to the source. The post claimed that Musk’s staffers are using “‘fingerprinting’ on emails and notices” as a way of identifying “information leakers.”
“This is essentially an email watermark—adding a space here, making a typo there, and similar subtle changes to track leaks,” the post read.
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Musk later replied to someone sharing the Reddit post on X.
“With regards to leakers: if in doubt, they are out,” wrote the world’s richest man. The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
After spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars on President Donald Trump’s re-election effort, Musk was put in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. The entity, which is not a government department, has been tasked with radically cutting federal spending.
Musk’s comment comes as President Donald Trump plunged the FBI into chaos by targeting officials linked to investigations into the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
About 1,600 rioters were charged in connection with the riot which came as Trump’s supporters tried to stop the certification ofJoe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump granted them clemency in a mass pardoning shortly after returning to power this month.
The government has also been trying to purge the civil service by encouraging employees to resign via email. Musk helped to orchestrate a Jan. 28 message sent to 2.3 million federal employees urging them to take a legally nebulous “deferred resignation,” The Washington Post reported.
Since then, Musk’s team has seized control of the entire federal payment system—which contains sensitive information about government contractors, Social Security payments and tax refunds—and the computer systems that manage all governmental personnel.
Then he went after the U.S. Agency for International Development’s personnel files and security systems. When security officials resisted, Musk’s staffers threatened to call the U.S. Marshals on them. Those officials were later put on leave.
Musk has claimed he was taking over the federal systems to stop “fraudulent payments.”
DOGE is also facing several lawsuits alleging that the group has violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act—the law that governs outside advisory panels—Lawfare reported.
The federal Whistleblower Protection Act protects federal employees who disclose rule-breaking, legal violations, gross mismanagement, abuse of authority and substantial and specific dangers to public health or safety.
As long as the information isn’t classified, a disclosure can be made to anyone—even a non-governmental audience, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Meaning one man’s “leak” could be another’s protected whistleblower.
