A senior executive at the Social Security Administration was physically dragged from his office this week after clashing with DOGE, according to The Washington Post.
Greg Pearre, a career civil servant who led an IT team working on the agency’s data systems, was removed over his opposition to a DOGE plan to cut off immigrants from key financial services, three people told the Post.
The scheme cooked up by Elon Musk’s DOGE squad falsely lists thousands of migrants as dead in a Social Security database known as the “death master file.”
Being entered into the death database cuts a person off from crucial financial services, like the ability to receive government benefits and access a bank account or credit card.
Fun fact, this is “assault” and the guy has a wonderful civil case.
Fun fact #2: civil cases are not criminal cases and are not subject to pardons.
Civil cases against government officers are however subject to qualified immunity while ones against the government are subject to sovereign immunity.
DOGE isn’t a real government entity, Big Balls isn’t on the US payroll and neither is the founder of Airbnb.
Believe it or not, the nebulous nature of the department actually is what makes them more likely to have qualified immunity because their role hasn’t been “clearly established” by case law. You couldn’t even talk say what “actions as a part of their duties” are. I’m not a fan of qualified immunity.
As far as suing the government over what DOGE does, good luck figuring out where an agency deputized by executive order fits in here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Tort_Claims_Act