At the time, DOGE teams run by billionaire Elon Musk were rampaging across the government, firing federal employees and accessing sensitive data and technology systems with no oversight and little transparency.
The next day, Berulis went public with his name and claims in the NPR article. In it, he claimed that in the lead-up to his congressional revelations, a threatening note was taped to his door, which also included photos of him walking his dog, which appeared to be taken by a drone. Berulis was already afraid that speaking out might make him a target.
In a new defamation lawsuit filed by Berulis in a DC court on April 17 and made public this week, Berulis alleges that Musk made himself the target of further violence by falsely implying that Berulis’ whistleblower claims against DOGE were bogus. The complaint was initially filed under seal because Berulis holds a security clearance that requires pre-publication review of anything related to his work with the government.
On Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, five days after the NPR story went live, Berulis got into his car to drive to Maryland to meet his uncle for the last time, opting to take local roads instead of a nearby major highway. Within about five minutes of leaving his house, Berulis realized something was wrong. As he approached a stop sign at an intersection, his car did not slow down. He ran off the road and into the sign. When he checked his car, he found something that horrified him: its brake lines had been cut.
Unbeknownst to Berulis at the time, at 8:06 pm on April 19, Musk had re-shared an Musk shared Nawafal’s post and wrote, “Knowingly filing a false whistleblower claim is a serious crime.” The story was originally broadcast by @amuse, an account that regularly shares misleading claims and misinformation and is followed by influential people such as Musk and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The @amuse post included Berulis’ name and photo.
According to a police report seen by WIRED, when a Prince William County police officer arrived on the scene, Berulis’ attorney, Andrew Bakaj, from Whistleblower Aid, which helped Berulis file a congressional complaint about DOGE, was also on the scene.
Berulis, who learned about Musk’s tweet after the accident, thought about the threatening note that was posted on his door earlier that month.
According to the lawsuit, Musk’s “readers were led to conclude” that Berulis had committed a serious crime, “as reflected in the replies demanding prosecution, jail, damages, or arrest,” and that this placed him at “an increased risk of physical harm.” In response to the post, which remains online, many users called for Berulis to be prosecuted. One user wrote, “Stitches get stitches.”
“The connection over time was obvious to me,” he says. Berulis also began to worry about how whoever was threatening him knew exactly where he lived.
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