JD Vance, Trump support bringing back DOGE employee targeted by WSJ over 'inappropriate statements'—Musk vows to bring him back

In a Wall Street Journal exclusive, the outlet dug into the deleted social media posts of one of Elon Musk's DOGE staffers. After they reached out to the Trump White House about it, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the man had resigned from his position with the newly formed non-agency tasked with rooting out government waste. The social media account was deleted in December, yet "hundreds of brash, sometimes-sophomoric posts have been archived," the Journal said.

Vice President JD Vance backed the return of the DOGE employee, Marko Elez. The 25-year-old, a Rutgers grad, founder of Unimetrics.io, was working on gaining access to the Treasury Department's payment system.

"Here’s my view," the VP said, "I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life. We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that." He shared a poll put up by Musk on whether or not Elez should return to his position.

President Trump was asked about the debacle during a press conference with the Prime Minister of Japan. While he was not familiar with the situation, he said that he agreed with his vice president on the matter.

Vance also supported Elez after social media attacks from Rep. Ro Khanna, who demanded that Vance tell Elez to apologize. "For the sake of both of our kids? Grow up," Vance said. "Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don't threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children."

DOGE had "read-only" access. DOGE has been exposing the waste rampant in the federal government, such as payments for expensive subscription services, the spread of LGBTQ propaganda globally through USAID, and is set to tackle fraud in health payments. They have not yet had a look at the Defense Department.

A judge upheld that permission for read-only access, saying that the Treasury must not allow "access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, except that the defendants may provide access" to specific people. These included Special Government Employees in the Department of the Treasury Tom Krause and Marko Elez, as well as "any person who is an employee (but not a Special Government Employee) of the Department of the Treasury and who has a need for the record or system of records in performance of their duties."

Elez was able to access and view the systems, but was not permitted to share any information. He was out of DOGE, however, by the end of the day. Elez had worked at SpaceX in the areas of "vehicle telemetry, starship software, and satellite software," Wired reported. At X, he worked on AI.

The Wall Street Journal reported that his "deleted social-media account" had "advocated for racism and eugenics." The reporter, Katherine Long, used to work as USAID, an agency that has come under such heavy scrutiny due to DOGE's efforts that it may be shut down entirely.

One of the posts the Journal highlighted read "Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool." This missive was posted in July 2024. In September, he said, in now-deleted posts, "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity," and "Normalize Indian hate."

It is not clear if these sentiments are a joke, a troll, or an earnest statement of heartfelt beliefs. Elez said "I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth," the Journal said, and also had weighed in on the H1B visa debate, saying "99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys."

Perhaps the implication is that Elez has a bias that would bleed over into his work, or that he should be so ashamed to exist that he cannot be of value in any capacity. The Journal's writers do not posit a scenario, it is simply enough to say that Elez had violated norms of discourse and to urge him out the door.

The Journal's report came after Wired dug into the staffers at DOGE earlier this week. They wrote that "Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy."

Wired took issue with the privileges that Elez had in the government, which was primarily the "read-only" access. Wired suggested that despite the "read-only" permissions, his admin-level privileges "could" allow the user to "change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files," or to "bypass security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to."

After Wired exposed the names of the six young men, all in their teens or early 20s, working in DOGE, there were public complaints by many media companies that the young men had no government experience. In response to this, Musk said "Time to confess: Media reports saying that @DOGE has some of world's best software engineers are in fact true." 

"I recognize that some of the staff at DOGE has been targeted publicly," US Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. said. "Any threats, confrontations, or other actions in any way that impact their work may break numerous laws."

There was some debate among media entities and on X as to whether or not the revelation of the names of the young men tasked by Musk to work on DOGE was doxxing. Now one of them has resigned over deleted posts that were dug up by a media outlet.

Elez, however, has received an outpouring of support. 

Musk later said that the employee would be brought back.