President Donald Trump has appointed a fraud detection expert to lead the Social Security Administration (SSA) following the resignation of its acting commissioner over a dispute regarding access to sensitive documents, according to The Washington Post.
Leland Dudek, who oversees SSA’s anti-fraud office, will serve as acting commissioner while the Senate reviews Frank Bisignano, Trump’s nominee for the permanent position. Dudek replaces Michelle King, a 30-year SSA veteran who resigned after refusing to provide sensitive records to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team, the outlet reported.
“@POTUS has nominated the highly qualified and talented Frank Bisignano to lead the @SocialSecurity Administration, and we expect him to be swiftly confirmed in the coming weeks,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, stated on X. “In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner.”
The appointment follows Musk’s recent comments about potential fraud in federal entitlement programs, asserting that it “exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR.” He specifically highlighted the issue of Social Security numbers assigned to individuals allegedly over 200 years old.
“Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem,” Musk wrote Monday. “Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second.”
According to an SSA Office of Inspector General report, approximately 44,000 of the 18.9 million Social Security number holders over age 100 still receive benefits, with an estimated 86,000 people over that age considered to be alive.
Dudek’s selection reportedly caused frustration among more senior SSA officials who felt bypassed. The agency has faced long-standing budget and staffing challenges, which former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley believes will worsen under DOGE’s oversight and leadership changes.
“At this rate, they will break it. And they will break it fast, and there will be an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley, who served under former President Joe Biden, told the outlet. “It’s a shame the chilling effect it has to disregard 120 executive service people. To pick an acting commissioner that is not in the senior executive service sends a message that professional people should leave that beleaguered public agency.”
King’s resignation follows similar conflicts across federal agencies, including a recent dispute over DOGE’s access to taxpayer data at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). A federal judge is expected to rule on DOGE’s access to IRS and other government data on Tuesday afternoon.
