Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Doge Bags

I think that this story at Wired is worth looking at.

A federal IT staffer filed a complaint about DOGE, then went public. Shortly after Elon Musk boosted a post calling his claims false, his brake lines were cut. Now he’s suing for defamation.

...In a new defamation lawsuit, filed by Berulis in a DC court on April 17 and made public this week, Berulis alleges that Musk himself made him a target of further violence by falsely stating that Berulis’ whistleblower claim against DOGE was fake. The complaint was initially filed under seal because Berulis maintains a security clearance that requires prepublication review of anything related to his work with the government.

Five days after the NPR story went live, on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, Berulis got in his car to drive to Maryland to make a last-minute visit to his uncle, opting to take local roads instead of the major highway nearby. Within about five minutes of leaving his house, Berulis realized something was wrong. As he approached a stop sign at an intersection, his car wouldn’t slow down. He ran off the road and into the sign. When he examined his car, he found something that terrified him: His brake lines had been cut.

Unbeknownst to Berulis at the time, the night before, on April 19, at 8:06 pm, Musk had reshared an X post from right-wing influencer Mario Nawfal, claiming that DOGE had been “cleared” and that people were asking the Department of Justice to investigate Berulis.

Like I needed another reason to despise Elon Musk.

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