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Agencies won’t hand over records for an investigation into how DOGE accessed data
▲ 1.1k r/fednews

Agencies won’t hand over records for an investigation into how DOGE accessed data

Democrats in Congress are raising the alarm as the Trump administration is not handing all its information over to a government watchdog.

It’s been nearly a year since Elon Musk left the federal government, and while there have been a few recent revelations, there is still plenty about how the U.S. DOGE Service operated and what its members did in government that remains shrouded in mystery. For months, the Government Accountability Office has been conducting a major investigation into how DOGE members handled sensitive information, but as new internal government emails reveal, final findings could leave plenty of key information out of public view.

Since last spring, the GAO has been looking into how DOGE members accessed sensitive government databases. But the probes have been stymied by federal agencies trying to avoid handing over information.

A GAO attorney emailed officials at the Department of Health and Human Services last month because, while the department provided much of the documentation that was requested, there were outstanding requests for information that were key to the investigation, including screenshots and a routine walk-through meeting to corroborate details about DOGE’s access to data.

The GAO attorney told the HHS officials that the congressional research arm could discuss how it would protect confidential information as it has with other agencies in the past.

Full gift article at the link.

wapo.st
u/Aggressive_Cow2130 — 1 day ago
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For days after the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, fellow workers for the Department of Veterans Affairs held vigils at health centers nationwide, partly in protest and partly to pay their respects.

Becky Halioua, a recreational therapist and union leader at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, said she felt “it was important to acknowledge him, as a brother of our organization.”

“It’s scary for me to think about a fellow VA employee being murdered by the same government that they work for,” Halioua told local TV station WRDW, a CNN affiliate, at the time. “That’s terrifying for me.”

Then Halioua learned she was under investigation by that same government. Her supervisor informed her that an internal probe had been launched into whether she violated agency rules regarding employee interviews with the news media, a probe that could result in disciplinary action.

Halioua is not alone, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN. At least three other VA employees have been investigated for their interactions with the press, including at least one other related to Alex Pretti, according to one of the sources.

As part of her investigation, Halioua says investigators emailed her photos of herself at the vigil from news coverage, which also included a brief interaction with a local newspaper. Someone had drawn a line around her image in some photographs, labeled with her name.

“It really gave me an uneasy feeling,” she says. Seeing her face circled in a photograph of a crowd seemed “very stalker-like.”

VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said he could not comment on Halioua’s case, citing privacy concerns. “Privacy laws prevent VA from publicly discussing specific details about its employees without their written consent,” Slaven said in a written statement. He did not address more general questions about the VA’s media relations policy and how often it conducts these types of investigations.

u/Aggressive_Cow2130 — 15 days ago