The wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanded that the acting head of the Social Security Administration back up claims by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk of massive phone fraud at the agency.
Former White aide Katie Miller, who exited the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, last month to work full-time for Musk, ordered acting SSA chief Leland Dudek to publicly repeat claims that 40 percent of all calls made to the agency’s customer service phone line involved some form of fraud or attempted scam, according to reporting from The New York Times.
Miller reportedly told Dudek, “The number is 40 percent,” in a phone call on April 1.
“Do not contradict the president,” she said. Miller demanded that Dudek toe the line even though staff at the agency tried to correct the figure in a memo on April 1, the Times reported, the same day Miller made the phone call to Dudek.
The false claim that 40 percent of all calls to the administration involved fraud or attempted fraud apparently originated from a misinterpretation of data.
The Times reported that the 40 percent number is a “distortion of a completely different statistic” involving calls by purported scammers trying to steal money by changing bank account information.
The real statistic is 25 to 30 percent of all phone calls related to changing direct deposit accounts are made by potential fraudsters, not 40 percent of all calls made to the agency. That’s a very different number. Yet it’s part of the claims Musk made earlier this year as the head of DOGE for taking a sledgehammer to staffing and making other cuts at the administration, as DOGE scooped up the personal data of millions of Americans.
“Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Musk & allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at Social Security based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans” – NYT,” New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel posted on social media.
Almost 69 million Americans rely on Social Security benefits, including retired and disabled workers and their dependents and survivors. That’s according to the Social Security Administration, which also reports nearly nine out of 10 people 65 and older received Social Security benefits as of Dec. 31, 2024.
A review by the digital news site Nextgov/FCW shows that less than one percent of all calls to the Social Security Administration involve potential fraud
But that didn’t stop MAGA supporters from voicing their outrage at the Times reporting.
“People with a brain know The NY Times is not objective and does whatever it can to make the Trump administration look bad!” an X user wrote.
“Well, if the left wing communists at The NY Times say so… lol,” another user posted.
Social security dates back to 1935 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. The legislation was a direct response to the devastating hardships and economic poverty of the Great Depression. The benefits program paid for out of payroll taxes is a vital source, and some cases the only source, of income for millions of older Americans.
