Federal investigators say some DOGE records were deleted

On April 14, 2025, a Federal IT employee ft. a Whistleblower Complaint to Congress Claiming that members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) He accessed and possibly leaked sensitive information from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

A few days after filing the complaint, whistleblower Dan Peroulis found his car’s brakes damaged It was cut off After suffering a minor accident near his home. The complaint that It became public In an NPR story the day after it was filed, it caused quite a stir Members of Congress Calling for an investigation. The following month, May 2025, As reported by FeedScoop The NLRB’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has opened an investigation. And it keeps going.

However, in April 2026, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—a federal agency within the legislative branch that conducts audits and investigations for Congress— published its own report About DOGE’s access to NLRB systems, titled “Details The National Labor Relations Board did not access IT systems between April 16 and July 25, 2025.” The report explicitly covers only the time period immediately following Berulis’ complaint, and does not address any DOGE activity prior to that point.

But there’s another revelation in the report’s footnotes: In August 2025, shortly after DOGE members left the NLRB but before GAO investigators were asked to “monitor the systems,” the agency “deleted team members’ accounts for system access after the agreement to detail DOGE team employees expired.” Essentially, this means that digital records of what data and systems DOGE members accessed and when were deleted, leaving GAO no way to confirm what NLRB staff told their investigators.

“I think you can imagine another situation where the footnote is the main subject of the report,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “The report raises more questions than it resolves, such as who deleted the data.”

The NLRB enforces laws related to unions and collective bargaining, and investigates unfair labor practices. This gives her access to the identities of the whistleblowers as well as their testimonies; Information about trade secrets and other proprietary data that may be important in issues related to negotiations between employers and employees; and a wide range of investigative materials.

According to the whistleblower complaint filed by Perulis, “Gender Ministry officials requested the highest level of access and unrestricted access to internal systems. They were to be granted what is referred to as ‘landlord-tenant’ level accounts, with essentially unrestricted permission to read, copy, and change data” — a level of access that exceeds that of the agency’s chief information officer.

In the report, GAO officials noted that they “conducted interviews with NLRB staff regarding the level of access they provided each system to the DOGE team,” but could not confirm whether what they were told was true because the DOGE accounts and associated information had already been deleted from the NLRB’s systems. It’s also not clear who the DOGE had access to: Justin Fox, Nate Kavanaugh, and Jordan Weick were all at one point at the NLRB, but no specific DOGE members were mentioned in the report nor in Perulis’s original whistleblower complaint.

The NLRB did not respond to a request for comment. Neither Fox nor Kavanaugh nor Wake.

Tesla and SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, who also led DOGE, have been the subject of NLRB investigations. Earlier this year, the NLRB The case was dropped against SpaceX, saying the agency had no jurisdiction over the company.

In the month of April statement Announcing the investigation into the dismissal of the case, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal wrote: “Given Musk’s extraordinary financial support for President Trump in the 2024 election, his significant influence in the Trump administration, and his interest in the NLRB’s work as Chairman (DOGE)… we are seeking answers to determine whether the decision to dismiss the case may be based on political considerations rather than the facts at hand.”