The Internal Revenue Service has now joined the list of federal agencies and offices experiencing life on the “DOGE” side. Two sources told TPM that a staffer affiliated with President Trump and Elon Musk’s controversial “efficiency” initiative left some bewildered and concerned on Thursday as they held their first meeting at the Washington headquarters of the tax agency.
Reuters and other news outlets have reported on the IRS meeting and identified the DOGE staffer involved as Gavin Kliger. A Capitol Hill source who was briefed on the meeting confirmed to TPM that Kliger represented DOGE at the agency. According to the Hill source, who requested anonymity to discuss the meeting, Kliger explained that DOGE wants to get a deep look inside the IRS.
“Their interest was … really across the board, so it included the operation of enforcements, it included taxpayer service in terms of function and the personnel footprint, and they wanted extensive system access,” the Hill source said.
That last point, the source said, brings up unique concerns and uncertainty since the IRS has deep knowledge of Americans’ personal financial information.
“What exactly that would look like, I’m not sure,” the source said of the DOGE demand for access, adding, “Levels of data protection at IRS are higher than at other agencies. … Not only is improper disclosure illegal, but improper inspection of data internally is illegal. So, it’s a really high bar of data security here. It’s hard to think about what extensive system access would look like for these guys that wouldn’t violate the law.”
Trump signed an executive action on Jan. 20, his first day in office, ordering the United States Digital Service to be renamed and reorganized as the Department of Government Efficiency. The entity is the brainchild of Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent over a quarter billion dollars backing Trump’s White House bid. It has made headlines and sparked controversy from the start with a questionably legal push to access sensitive data and to slash federal programs and the overall workforce. The unconventional backgrounds of the members of the DOGE teams — many of whom are relatively young and have ties to companies linked to Musk or other Silicon Valley executives — has added to the furor. One DOGE staffer, Marko Elez, resigned last week after the Wall Street Journal highlighted racist posts he made on a social media account. Musk, who has been dubbed a “special government employee,” and named the effort after a meme, has headed the office and served as its most prominent cheerleader online, blasting out a steady stream of commentary about its activities on X, the social media platform he owns.
A Treasury Department source with knowledge of Kliger’s meeting at the IRS said the DOGE staffer had a handful of phones, which struck the agency’s employees as “bizarre.”
“He basically had the vibe of a McKinsey consultant and came in and asked about headcount and how many people are in each department,” the Treasury source said, adding, “He had a black Mac, which didn’t seem to be government issue, and five iPhones.”
On LinkedIn, Kliger, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2020, indicated he was working at the software company Databricks up until last month when he became a “special advisor” at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. On a Substack that has been identified as belonging to Kliger, he describes himself as a “Silicon Valley engineer” who had a “political awakening.” Kliger also, according to a Reuters report, amplified content from neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes on a Twitter page that he later partially deleted and locked down.
The Treasury source said the DOGE staffers who have made contact at the department have been focused on “ROI,” or return on investment. In the context of the IRS, that would mean a focus on maximizing collections while keeping other costs down, the source said.
“I think they’re focused on collection now because they need every dollar they can for those tax cuts,” the source said of DOGE and the Trump administration. “You want to make it as streamlined as possible but also collect money.”
Of course, despite the Silicon Valley buzzwords about maximizing cashflow, DOGE has targeted agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has saved an estimated $20 billion for people while costing far less.
On Friday afternoon, news broke about some of the slimming down Trump and DOGE might have in mind. The Washington Post reported that, in the wake of Kliger’s meeting with the IRS, Trump administration officials were discussing plans to lay off roughly 9,000 employees at the tax agency as part of a massive DOGE-driven slash to the federal workforce. Cuts to the IRS, which could reverse efforts by Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, to beef up the agency, have sparked worries from experts who say it would make it easier for high net worth individuals and corporations to exploit the enforcement system.
In Kliger’s meeting, the Treasury source confirmed that the main thing DOGE is asking for is extensive access to the tax agency’s information and internal systems.
“They’re just trying to snap up data right now,” the source said.
That aggressive push for government data has been one of the main concerns among DOGE’s many critics. On Thursday afternoon, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, raised alarm bells about DOGE’s presence at the IRS via a post on X.
“My office is hearing that DOGE is now at the IRS,” Wyden wrote. “That means Musk’s henchmen are in a position to dig through a trove of data about every taxpayer in America. And if your refund is delayed, they could very well be the reason.”
Musk responded in his typical terminally online fashion: He replied to Wyden’s post with a pair of laughing and crying emojis.
Amid all of the concerns about legality, data access, and controversial far-right social media posts, the Treasury Department source who told TPM about the DOGE meeting said there was something else that stuck with them: Kliger’s iPhone arsenal.
“The weirdest thing was just the five iPhones,” the source said.
