DOGE staffer, 25, to access IRS system to locate fraud

WASHINGTON — A 25-year-old staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is expected to [be given] access to the IRS’s…tax database as fraud becomes a major focus of the deficit-cutting initiative, The Post has confirmed.

Software engineer Gavin Kliger will gain credentials to the system that tracks tax returns and information about individuals as DOGE [identifies wasteful] spending [that needs to be cut] across the federal bureaucracy.

“Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long. It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement first reported by CNN.

“DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard earned tax dollars on.”

It’s unclear what exactly Kliger will be looking into by using the database — as millions of Americans prepare to submit their annual returns, due by April 15.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Monday afternoon that part of the DOGE review would be focused on locating fraud by foreigners who file bogus returns to steal from the government.

“There’s a massive amount of fraud in this country. You have, for example, foreign fraud rings — these are foreign nationals who come into the United States — they use fake Social Security numbers, they use fake identities to steal billions in taxpayer benefits,” Miller said on Fox News.

“There’s no way to know until DOGE gains full access exactly how much money we’re talking about, but over a 10-year normal budget window, you could be talking about saving over $1 trillion by clamping down on massive fraud in our tax and entitlement systems, including, again, those carried out by organized fraud and theft rings.” …

Meanwhile, DC US District Judge Tanya Chutkan [held a hearing Monday in which she questioned the authority of DOGE but was skeptical of a request from 14 Democrat-led states to block DOGE staffers from accessing federal databases and the Trump administration from firing employees at half a dozen federal agencies, saying the broad request would “essentially bring government to a halt.”  Judge Chutkan said she would rule within 24 hours].

Core members of Musk’s team are now classified as federal officials, with some of them serving, like the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, as unpaid special government employees.

Kliger, a University of California at Berkeley-educated software whiz, was one of DOGE’s first hires and explained in a Substack post that he left behind “millions of dollars, prestige, and a life of comfort” in the private sector to help root out “institutional failure” and “systemic corruption.”

In addition to fraudulent outflows, the IRS estimates that it reaps significantly less each year than is owed — about $540 billion, or more than a quarter of the annual federal deficit.

That’s on top of entitlement fraud impacting the Social Security system, with Musk claiming that initial inquiries have discovered payments to illegal immigrants and implausibly old retirees [some 150 years old]. The scale of those issues remains murky.

Medicare fraud, which has not yet emerged as a major focus in public disclosures, reportedly costs the feds additional billions. …

Trump, 78, revealed last week that DOGE now comprises about 100 people after launching in late January with “12 geniuses.”

“They’ll ask questions and they’ll see immediately, if somebody gets tongue-tied, that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing,” the president said earlier this month.

Musk, 53, has said he hopes to halve the federal deficit by trimming $1 trillion in spending. …

The DOGE involvement in the IRS database could be one of its most sensitive operations to date, as any action to toughen enforcement on ordinary taxpayers could spur political backlash. [That is not the purpose of DOGE. See question #3 and 5 for types of fraud the DOGE team will identify and eliminate].

Republicans, including Trump, fiercely opposed former President Joe Biden’s $80 billion boost in IRS funding in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, [in which he hired] up to 87,000 new IRS agents [to what many believe was to harass] Americans. …

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