From day one, the DOGE team served as a self-described sledgehammer to issues raised by the administration on any and all aspects of the federal government. DOGE, introduced as a way to combat waste, fraud and abuse, was instead used as a personal aide to Trump. They Thousands were fired of federal employees. He cut humanitarian aid around the world, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths deaths so farThere is much more to come too. DOGE also misused Americans’ private data, resulting in multiple Congressional investigations into the department—investigations into the administration of other federal agencies refusal to cooperate with.
In 2025, when an employee of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) learned that DOGE had been compromised and began downloading his agency’s data – as well as logging attempts from a Russian address – he immediately became concerned. The NLRB did not authorize DOGE’s access to that data. DOGE didn’t even request it. The concerned IT worker, Dan Berulis, made the difficult decision to risk his career and prepared to file a whistleblower complaint with Congress. What he didn’t know at the time was that calling DOGE would put more than just his job at risk.
The day after his complaint was filed, Berulis brought his concerns to the public through a special npr article Due to which his identity was exposed. In the interview, Berulis shared that, in the days before he blew the whistle, a threatening note was taped to his door, as well as drone camera photos of him walking his dog. as mentioned wiredThese new allegations have emerged as part of a defamation suit filed against Elon Musk in April this year which recently became public record.
Just two days after the NPR article, on the evening of April 19, 2025, Musk reshared a post on X Claims were made that Berulis “knowingly filed a false whistleblower claim.” Berulis’ case alleges that this untrue allegation by the richest man on Earth with more than a quarter billion followers on the social media platform put a target on his back, citing a horrifying incident that occurred just hours after Musk re-shared it on Facebook.
The next day, when Berulis drove to see a family member, he immediately realized something was wrong. While approaching a stop sign at an intersection, he found that he was unable to slow his vehicle and veered off the road toward the sign to avoid colliding with several cars. When Berulis inspected the vehicle, he was horrified to discover that its brake lines had been cut.
It took some time for Berulis to learn about Musk’s repost and connect it to his mysterious accident and threatening note. After realizing this, he no longer felt safe in his home and immediately fled to a hotel before canceling his lease.
As Berulis told WIRED, the brake lines were likely tampered with, “when the car was parked in the driveway of my house. The note came to the house… I didn’t feel safe there at all. I never lived at that address again.”
Berulis’ defamation case is still ongoing and he admits filing it is akin to “kicking a hornet’s nest” and could put him back in the crosshairs of Musk’s most die-hard fans. Despite the potential risks and what he sees as an unexpected victory in court due to “asymmetry”, Berulis is hopeful that something positive will come from the proceedings, even if it is drawing more attention to the damage done by DOGE and Musk’s role in the carnage.
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