DOGE Staffer Resigns Over Racist Posts
Employee has links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics
Feb. 6, 2025 at 3:53 pm
The staffer who resigned was embedded at theU.S. Treasury Department to carry out efficiency measures.
A staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge on Thursday has links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.
The deleted profile associated with Elez, who was embedded in the Treasury Department to carry out efficiency measures, advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act and backed a “eugenic immigration policy” in the weeks before President Trump was inaugurated.
“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. “Normalize Indian hate,” the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
After the Journal inquired about the account, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that Elez had resigned from his role.
In recent days, Elez had emerged at the center of a legal battle over access to sensitive taxpayer information and systems the Treasury Department uses to process trillions of dollars in payments annually.
Thursday morning, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that Elez could continue to access the department’s payment systems, but limited his ability to share the data. Elez resigned later that same day.
Elez didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
Elez attended Rutgers University, where he majored in computer science. As a sophomore, he co-founded a company, Unimetrics.io, that aimed to connect high-schoolers with mentors who could help burnish their college applications.
Elez went on to work for Musk at SpaceX, Starlink, and X, where he focused on artificial intelligence, according to archives of his personal website.
DOGE has radically upended the federal government in the weeks since President Trump’s inauguration, including by largely dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency appears to have hired a number of young Musk loyalists who are steeped in Internet culture and who share his world-view.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency appears to have hired a number of young Musk loyalists who are steeped in Internet culture and who share his world-view. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Press Pool
Musk personally urged people to apply to DOGE on X in December, promising long hours and little pay in exchange for the chance to fundamentally remake the federal government. Some of those who answered the call appear to be young Musk loyalists, steeped in internet culture, who share his world-view.
The account, @nullllptr—a misspelling of a keyword in the C++ programming language—was deleted in December, but hundreds of brash, sometimes-sophomoric posts have been archived.
The user appeared to have a special dislike for Indian software engineers. “99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys,” the user posted in December.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” @nullllptr posted in July.
In June, the user weighed in on the conflict in the Middle East, offering some sympathy for Israel but also posting, “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”
The deleted @nullllptr account previously went by the username @marko_elez, a review of archived posts shows. The user behind the @nullllptr also described themselves as an employee at SpaceX and Starlink.
Elez currently operates another X account, which also has the username @marko_elez; the two accounts often interacted with the same users and posted similar content, including posts complimentary of Musk and SpaceX, archives show.
Jack Gillum and Heather Somerville contributed to this article.
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