dave whammond
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Shocking disclosures regarding a data breach at the National Labor Relations Board suggest illegal conduct by DOGE members
Over the weekend, NPR published a lengthy story about a potential major data breach at the National Labor Relations Board. At first blush, the story sounds like it is in 45th place on the list of the most horrible things that Trump and DOGE have done in the first 86 days of his administration.
But you must pay attention to this story. It is a national scandal that suggests DOGE has intentionally exposed confidential US government information to foreign adversaries.
I will give a very brief summary, but urge you to read, listen to, or watch one of the sources I cite below.
In short, a whistleblower from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) claims the following:
DOGE gained access to the NLRB's most sensitive information, which included labor complaints, identity of whistleblowers, identity of private employees engaged in union organizing, and enforcement actions against private companies (like Tesla and SpaceX).
DOGE turned off log files that would record their actions.
DOGE set up a “black box” inside the NLRB network so that NLRB IT personnel could not monitor what was happening.
DOGE disabled security protections, thereby exposing the NLRB’s sensitive information to the internet.
Within 15 minutes of the firewall protections being disabled, someone using an IP address in Russia used a username and password for a DOGE team member to attempt to access the NLRB information.
NLRB IT members witnessed a massive spike in information being downloaded from the NLRB servers.
A DOGE team member set up a file that was briefly visible on a public forum; the filename suggested that it was a “backdoor” download program for an NLRB-specific database.
The NLRB IT staff asked the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) security team to help launch an investigation, but the CISA investigation was peremptorily shut down without explanation.
The employee who asked CISA to begin the investigation received a typed note on his residence door which warned the employee to drop the request for CISA assistance and included personal details about the employee known only from government files. The note also included a drone photo of the employee walking his dog on a public street.
A spokesperson for the NLRB issued a statement claiming that DOGE never visited the NLRB and did not gain access to NLRB data—a statement that seems to a blatant, easily disprovable lie.
I have not done justice to the details of the story. There are three ways you can educate yourself about this story.
First, the lengthy NPR article is here: NPR, Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data.
Second, the NPR report has a seven-minute audio summary embedded in the article. It is an accessible entry point into the article.
Finally, Rachel Maddow did an excellent job of explaining the whistleblower allegations on Tuesday evening. I have excerpted the 20-minute segment of her show that includes an interview with the whistleblower and his attorney. See The Rachel Maddow Show, Whistleblower Excerpt, April 15, 2025.
As a personal favor to me (and you), I urge you to watch the Rachel Maddow segment. It will bring you up to speed on this scandal, which will be around for a long time and may be the undoing of DOGE.
If you watch the Rachel Maddow show, you will meet the whistleblower--Daniel Berulis—who is a loyal employee of the federal government who says that he “hopes he is wrong” in believing that DOGE exposed sensitive information to someone in Russia who was using a DOGE username and password.
At this very moment, there are hundreds or thousands of Daniel Berulises in the federal government who have not come forward. Daniel Berulis’s example should encourage them to come forward to describe other instances of DOGE misconduct or carelessness that may have harmed America’s interests.
If Berulis’s allegations are true, it is difficult to see how the conduct by at least one DOGE member does not rise to the level of a felony. We need to know more and must be open to the facts, including denials of the allegations. But the allegations are truly shocking and suggest that DOGE may have inflicted grievous injury on the US by exposing confidential information.
CODA: As shocking as the above allegations are, we have reasonable grounds for believing misconduct by Trump administration officials in seeking to conceal their unlawful actions.
Remember Signalgate? You may recall that CIA Director John Ratcliffe participated in chats on an non-secure commercial application. Congress has asked that all such communications be turned over for review.
Well, it might not shock you to learn that the CIA’s information technology team has informed Congress that none of John Ratcliff’s communications on Signal are recoverable. See MSNBC, Missing Signal messages from CIA director’s phone raise cover-up concerns.
Remember after the January 6 insurrection when most of the Secret Service’s texts were mysteriously deleted and therefore unavailable for review by the January 6 Committee? See PBS News, Government watchdog says Secret Service agents deleted Jan. 6 text messages.
Once is a mistake. Twice is a suspicious coincidence. Three times is a damning pattern. Secret Service. Signalgate. DOGE. It appears that actors within the Trump administration believe that destroying communications is an acceptable way to avoid accountability. It is up to Congress and the courts to get to the bottom of the DOGE NLRB incident and Signalgate as quickly as possible—before more evidence goes missing.
[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]
