The top official at the Social Security Administration stepped down this weekend after members of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency sought access to sensitive personal data about millions of Americans held by the agency, according to people familiar with the matter.
The resignation of Michelle King, the acting commissioner, is the latest abrupt departure of a senior federal official who refused to provide Mr. Musk’s lieutenants with access to closely held data. Mr. Musk’s team has been embedding with agencies across the federal government and seeking access to private data as part of what it has said is an effort to root out fraud and waste.
Spokespeople for the Social Security Administration and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A family member said Ms. King had no comment.
Social Security payments account for about $1.5 trillion, or a fifth, of annual federal spending in the United States. President Trump has pledged not to enact cuts to the program’s retirement benefits, but he has indicated that he is willing to look for ways to cut wasteful or improper spending from the retirement program that pays benefits to millions of Americans.
An audit produced by the Social Security Administration’s inspector general last year found that from 2015 to 2022, the agency paid almost $8.6 trillion in benefits and made approximately $71.8 billion in improper payments that usually involved recipients getting too much money.
Mr. Musk’s team at the Social Security Administration was seeking access to internal data that provides extensive personal information about Americans, according to a former agency employee familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. The agency’s systems contain financial data, employment information and addresses for anyone with a Social Security number.
“S.S.A. has comprehensive medical records of people who have applied for disability benefits,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a group that promotes the expansion of Social Security. “It has our bank information, our earnings records, the names and ages of our children, and much more.”
Warning about the risks of Mr. Musk’s team accessing the data, Ms. Altman added, “There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is.”
Access to that information is generally held closely within the agency because of privacy concerns, the former employee said. It is not clear how many members of Mr. Musk’s staff sought to access it, whether they ultimately succeeded or whether they had been granted full employment status at the Social Security Administration. The Washington Post first reported Ms. King’s departure.
Ms. King in January had been made the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, which has about 58,000 employees. She started at the agency as bilingual claims representative in 1994 and rose through the ranks to hold numerous senior positions, including chief financial officer and deputy commissioner for operations.
Ms. King was replaced by Leland Dudek, a career official who has been overseeing the agency’s anti-fraud office, according to people familiar with the matter. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Musk’s team has also been seeking access to sensitive data at the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service.
The White House confirmed this weekend that Mr. Musk’s team was in the process of gaining access to taxpayer information from the tax collection agency.
“Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said on Saturday. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”
In January, the Treasury Department pushed out a career civil servant, David Lebryk, after he resisted giving Mr. Musk’s team access to government’s vast payment system at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
Speaking at the White House last week, Mr. Musk asserted without providing evidence that a cursory examination of the Social Security Administration found that people listed in its systems as being 150 years old were receiving benefits. And in a post on X on Saturday evening, Mr. Musk posted an image that he said was from a Social Security database that he suggested indicated dead people were collecting payments.
Martin O’Malley, who served as commissioner of the Social Security Administration in the Biden administration, said in an interview that the claims of Mr. Musk and his team about the agency were not true.
“They’re just making” things up, he said, referring to Mr. Musk’s suggestion that more than a million people in the Social Security database are in the 150 to 159 age range.
Mattathias Schwartz contributed reporting.
