Whistleblower Jeremiah Schofield said he refused to carry out a Trump administration plan to add 2.7 million living people to the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File. He said a sample he pulled showed the people marked for death were still alive.
The disclosure centers on a 49-page document reviewed by The Washington Post. Schofield said agency lawyers warned that falsely marking someone as dead could violate federal law, while the SSA says wrongful placement can cut off access to bank accounts and credit cards.
Schofield worked at the Social Security Administration for 25 years before leaving in October. He told The Washington Post that he refused to implement the plan and later said, “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
He also said, “That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” describing a meeting with a DOGE official. According to Schofield, he concluded the purpose was to terrorize immigrants.
The Death Master File is used to record when a person has died and should stop receiving government benefits. Schofield said the plan would have pushed names and Social Security numbers of living people into that file, and he said a sample of the 2.7 million names showed all of them were still alive.
The SSA website says being wrongly included in the file can be “devastating to the individual, spouse, and dependent children.” The file can also...
Williams boss James Vowles has confirmed that the team intend to fight "false claims" in the UK media in a court of law. Last week, it was reported by The Guardian that the team and its parent com...