The White House is trying to get to the bottom of an incident involving a former Veterans Affairs employee who used their position to target a prominent critic of Elon Musk, according to a White House official and a second person familiar with the matter granted anonymity to speak freely.
James Fishback, the anti-DEI investor who recently launched FSD PAC — a super PAC aimed at blunting Musk’s political ambitions — received a direct message on X from the official DOGE Veterans Affairs account.
“James – we need to talk. Your recent behavior has crossed some serious lines. That’s why we rejected your DOGE application in the first place. Let’s step your game up. This is embarrassing,” read the message, reviewed by POLITICO.
Fishback said he never applied to work at DOGE. Fishback advised Vivek Ramaswamy on DOGE while Ramaswamy was still involved, and conceived of the “DOGE dividend check” plan, which President Donald Trump and Musk both embraced.
The person who sent the message no longer works for the VA, the White House official said, adding that the White House is confident that everyone working in the administration is part of the same team. If that is found not to be the case, that person said, repercussions will follow.
“The president’s mission is to make sure the goal of cutting waste fraud and abuse is successful and continues,” said White House spokesperson Harrison Fields. “The American people elected him to be a better steward of taxpayer dollars, and every agency and department is working seamlessly to execute the president’s campaign promise.”
This is the only known example of a Musk loyalist going rogue and acting at odds with Trump’s and the GOP’s agenda, but the incident comes at a delicate moment as the administration is grappling with how to manage DOGE’s influence now that Musk has turned into a Trump adversary.
The White House’s Presidential Personnel Office has made loyalty a cornerstone of its hiring strategy, scouring social media accounts and grilling applicants about their Trump bona fides. But DOGE hires, selected through a separate Musk-led process, didn’t undergo the same level of scrutiny, according to a Trump official granted anonymity to describe the process.
Musk announced last week that he is forming a new political party, the America Party, with plans to pour financial resources into two or three Senate races and as many as 10 House contests. “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,” Musk said Friday.
Trump quickly fired back.
“Saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” he posted on Truth Social over the weekend. Trump has also threatened to turn DOGE against Musk, though it is unclear how much control he has over the network of employees who signed up to work for the tech mogul.
The DOGE VA account that messaged Fishback has no public posts aside from a single reply in February, when it engaged an X user about improving veterans’ health care. The message questioned whether opening new VA hospitals was the right solution but acknowledged that more could be done to serve veterans despite the VA being the nation’s largest health system.
The VA-linked account is one of several DOGE-branded X accounts, including @DOGE_USDA and @DOGE_SSA that have remained mostly dormant. The most active social accounts promoting DOGE activities, aside from the main handle, are tied to the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management — two agencies that remain DOGE strongholds.
GSA is led by Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian, and Josh Gruenbaum serves as Commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service within GSA. Charles Ezell serves as Acting Director of OPM. Both agencies, each stacked with dozens of DOGE employees, have been reoriented since the start of Trump’s second term to implement DOGE’s agenda. According to the New York Times’ DOGE tracker, seven DOGE employees have ties to the Department of Veterans Affairs.