Acting Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Michelle King quit her position over the weekend after she disagreed with giving Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers access to taxpayers' private data.
Three sources close to King confirmed her departure, and Trump appointed Leland Dudek to take her place on Monday while his nominee for the position, Frank Bisignano, undergoes the confirmation process.
The White House expects Bisignano to be confirmed within the next few weeks.
"In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner," Principal Deputy Press Secretary at the White House, Harrison Fields said about Bisignano. "President Trump is committed to appointing the best and most qualified individuals who are dedicated to working on behalf of the American people, not to appease the bureaucracy that has failed them for far too long."
Bisignano reportedly has posted positive comments about the efforts of DOGE to find and cut federal fraud and waste.
DOGE reported over the weekend that it found more than 20 million people in the Social Security database that were 100 years old or older, despite census data putting that number at more like 80,000.
DOGE wants to find out how many are collecting benefits fraudulently so it can correct the situation and save taxpayers billions more dollars.
According to SSA's numbers, the average Social Security check in January 2025 was $1,976.
If 19,920,000 people are getting fraudulent checks every month, that's a potential fraud of over $39 billion per month or $472 billion per year, which is almost half a trillion dollars.
It stands to reason that a career SSA employee like King might not want that level of fraud to be known, or may not want to be blamed for it.
Musk said that it's probably magnitudes larger than the largest private scam ever.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, commented on Musk's X post that "this problem has been known for at least a decade and now @realDonaldTrump, through @DOGE and @ElonMusk's team, wants to finally do something about it!"
Half a trillion dollars is about a quarter of the amount DOGE aims to find in yearly savings to balance the U.S. budget and reverse the decades-long trend of deficit spending.
How many more secrets are hiding in our government agencies that have contributed to the more than $36 trillion in debt our nation now carries?
