The curious case of Leland Dudek

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Acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Michelle King resigned over the holiday weekend after she reportedly refused to aid Elon Musk’s pseudo-agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with accessing sensitive beneficiary data. King left a vacancy that was immediately filled by Leland Dudek, a guy who most people at the agency had never heard of before. By Wednesday night, Musk was publicly praising him as a hero. What happened?

In a now-deleted LinkedIn post on Friday from Dudek that was shared with me earlier this week, he proudly admits to violating multiple agency protocols and ethical standards in service of Musk’s SSA team—which I’ve confirmed includes Ethan Shaotran, Nikhil Rajpal, Gautier Cole-Killian and Marko Elez (who previously resigned after his racist social media posts resurfaced but has been reinstated).

Dudek posted his confessionary tale when King was still in charge, but when his fate suddenly changed early this week, the post vanished. Here is the full text, which has been referenced elsewhere but not published in its entirety: 

Before his big promotion, Dudek was a management analyst in a non-supervisory role, according to a current SSA staffer. The New York Times reported Dudek was overseeing the agency’s anti-fraud office, but I’ve been told this is an inflation of his actual role. He was, I’m told, a GS-15 employee, which means he was at the highest government pay grade below Senior Executive Service (SES). But he was “so junior,” according to Nancy Altman, President of the nonprofit Social Security Works, that her sources at the agency were not familiar with him. 

Going from a sub-SES position to Acting Commissioner overnight is unheard of, multiple government employees across agencies said. Dudek had achieved a remarkable feat. 

It was initially unclear who had disciplined Dudek. King seemed likely, but multiple staffers told me they had heard Gina Clemons, Assistant Deputy Commissioner for SSA Analytics, Review, and Oversight, was the one who ordered Dudek to be put on administrative leave. And the far-right news outlet The Daily Wire reported Wednesday that they’d confirmed Clemons’ role. There is speculation among staff that King was ordered to fire Clemons for disciplining Dudek, and when she refused, was forced to step now.

At an “awkward” all-hands staff meeting Tuesday at SSA’s Baltimore-area headquarters, Clemons made a point of badmouthing the press for how it was reporting King’s exit, according to a person who was present.

“Gina took the last five minutes of our staff meeting to say those stories were not true,” the person said, “and that Ms. King's resignation was a personal choice that had nothing to do with DOGE.” In that meeting, Clemons stressed that DOGE was there to help, and announced Dudek’s new role. 

Another staffer who previously worked in the same office as Dudek described him as someone who thinks very highly of himself and can be condescending. But they also said there were others in the office who respected him.

“I lost any respect I might have had for him on Friday when I read his ‘confessions’,” the staffer said, referring to Dudek’s deleted LinkedIn post. “I also think he should, very clearly, communicate to the public that the generalizations being made by Musk about social security are fully and completely inaccurate.”

Musk has recently been posting on X/Twitter that people who are hundreds of years old (in other words, dead) are still receiving Social Security checks. One post read: “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …” (This is all patently false.)

When Dudek was first promoted on Monday, he sent out a note to all SSA staff that included a peculiar line, which didn’t make much sense at the time, “My first call as Acting Commissioner was to our Inspector General's office to provide them an opportunity to oversee and review any and all agency activities, including my actions past, present, and future.” 

His LinkedIn post hadn’t been widely publicized yet, but he was already running cover. The New York Times vaguely updated their story late Monday or early Tuesday to say that, “Before he was named, Mr. Dudek posted comments on LinkedIn praising Mr. Musk’s team and saying he had been assisting its efforts, according to people who saw his posts. Mr. Dudek has deleted his account.”

After I called this out on Bluesky Wednesday morning, I noticed the NYT story was then updated again. They wrote SSA had been “investigating him for working with Mr. Musk’s team,” and shared a piece of his deleted post, though not the part about him being placed on administrative leave.

The story of what actually happened started to come together: Dudek had been placed on leave by previous leadership for helping DOGE; he posted about it; Musk caught wind of what Dudek had done for him and forced the former Acting Commissioner to resign; then he rewarded Dudek for his loyalty by promoting him to temporarily lead the agency while they waited for Senate confirmation of Trump’s nominee Frank Bisignano, a banking executive. (Bisignano, an SSA staffer told me, is currently “in the loop on everything.”)

By Wednesday evening, this version of events was confirmed by The Daily Wire. “Dudek, a career civil servant, is an example of how there are a few fiscally conscious longtime government employees, and how the Trump administration and DOGE can maximize their impact by joining forces with people who know where the bodies are buried,” they wrote. 

In their telling, breaking the law to aid a rogue pseudo-government agency is just fiscally-conscious. From their perspective, Dudek could blackmail his fellow SSA staffers, which makes him valuable to the administration. Kids, you, too, could achieve greatness by becoming a quisling. 

By late Wednesday night, his attempted elevation to folk hero status became official when Elon Musk himself posted about Dudek’s miraculous ascension. 

There is no evidence Dudek was actually fired, or was ever officially put on leave given the decision came late Friday and Monday was a federal holiday. Based on the Vacancies Act, anyone currently working at an agency can be tapped as an acting leader by the incoming administration until their nominee for the job receives senate confirmation. In other words, Musk is lying.

Not only has Musk’s team taken a wrecking ball to federal agencies, but now they’ve flipped the script on what it means to be a valued worker. 

“[Musk] is turning Dudek into a symbol of blind allegiance and obedience to him and Trump, rather than the Constitution and Rule of Law,” an SSA source told me. “Every one of us swears to serve and protect the Constitution in our Oath of Office—not to serve the President or Administration. They want a Dudek in every single organization within the federal government.”