Role: 2020 UC Berkeley EECS graduate (age 25); senior software engineer at Databricks 2020–2025 (per DefenseScoop, Wikipedia); entered federal service in January 2025 with the second Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE); deployed across USAID, CFPB, IRS, OPM, GSA, USDA, USAGM, and FTC (per Revolving Door Project, Wikipedia; his LinkedIn describes his OPM role as “Senior Advisor to the Director for Technology and Delivery”); joined the DoD’s DOGE team in December 2025; named Chief Data Officer of the U.S. Department of Defense on March 6, 2026 (per DefenseScoop, ExecutiveGov, GovCIO Media, Breaking Defense, Wikipedia).

Basis for Inclusion

Subject classification: Voluntary Public Figure.

Anchor met: Anchor B / D — operational coordinator role at DOGE, personally directing the CFPB workforce purge enjoined by a federal court.

Background

Kliger earned a 2020 UC Berkeley bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked at Databricks before entering federal service in January 2025 with the second Trump administration’s DOGE. Reuters documented that Kliger retweeted posts from Nick Fuentes (a self-described white-supremacist commentator) and Andrew Tate (under investigation in Romania for human trafficking, including allegations involving minors), and called for a pardon of Derek Chauvin, the police officer convicted in the killing of George Floyd (Reuters, Feb. 7, 2025; Revolving Door Project).

DOGE Role

• Multi-agency placement: USAID, CFPB, IRS, OPM, GSA, USDA, USAGM (U.S. Agency for Global Media), and FTC (Revolving Door Project, Wikipedia). His LinkedIn profile lists his OPM role as Senior Advisor to the Director for Technology and Delivery.
• IRS (early 2025): Reportedly the first DOGE member to meet with IRS officials, one day before the IRS discussed laying off approximately 9,000 employees (The Atlantic, “The DOGE Plan That Endangers U.S. Revenue”). A February 2025 Washington Post report described a proposed IRS memo detailing a 120-day Kliger deployment at the agency, renewable for another 120 days.
• CFPB workforce purge (April 2025): Personally managed the CFPB reduction in force. On April 13, 2025, OMB Director Russell Vought emailed Kliger and a small team with the subject line “CFPB RIF Work”; within hours the bureau’s chief information officer wrote to Kliger granting him agency system access “to do what you need to do” (ProPublica; court records). On April 17, 2025, RIF notices went to more than 1,400 CFPB employees — part of a DOGE-led plan to cut nearly 90% of the bureau’s workforce. Per a sworn court declaration filed under the pseudonym “Alex Doe,” Kliger kept staff up for 36 hours straight to push termination notices, screaming at colleagues he judged insufficiently fast and calling them incompetent.
• Federal court injunction: A federal judge halted the Kliger-managed CFPB staff purge (Student Borrower Protection Center / Protect Borrowers coverage, “Federal Judge Halts Musk Minion From Running an Illegal and Reckless CFPB Staff Purge,” 2025).
• DoD DOGE team (December 2025): Kliger joined the Department of Defense’s DOGE team, where he helped launch GenAI.mil, the department’s official enterprise AI platform, which the department reports reached one million unique users within two months of launch (Wikipedia, DefenseScoop, Breaking Defense). He also contributed to the department’s Drone Dominance Program, focused on rapidly fielding American-made one-way attack drones (ExecutiveGov, Wikipedia).
• DoD Chief Data Officer (March 6, 2026): The Department of Defense announced Kliger’s appointment as Chief Data Officer, a role described as placing him “at the center of the Department’s most ambitious AI efforts,” with responsibility for day-to-day alignment of AI projects and direct coordination with frontier AI laboratories (DefenseScoop, ExecutiveGov, GovCIO Media, Breaking Defense).
• Anthropic supply-chain-risk designation (context of appointment): Kliger’s CDO appointment came days after the Pentagon formally designated Anthropic and its Claude models a “supply chain risk” — a label typically reserved for foreign firms. The designation followed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s February 26, 2026 announcement that the company would not accede to demands for unrestricted DoD use of Claude, citing ethical concerns about autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly accused Anthropic of threatening national security, and the department moved to phase out Anthropic’s technology (DefenseScoop, GovCIO Media, Breaking Defense, Times of India).

Documented Actions

• Held simultaneous Databricks senior software engineer status (on leave) and federal DOGE roles.
• Personally directed the CFPB workforce-reduction operation — including the 36-hour push and management-by-screaming behavior — that was halted by court.
• Disclosed up to $715,000 in shares of seven companies on the CFPB’s “Prohibited Holdings” list while directing the CFPB workforce purge — Apple, Tesla, Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, Alibaba, and the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Solana (ProPublica; Reed–Warren–Wyden joint letter, May 29, 2025). ProPublica first reported up to $365,000 in shares of four companies in April 2025, then documented additional prohibited holdings on further review of Kliger’s public financial report.
• Was warned by CFPB ethics attorneys that his holdings included stock that agency employees are forbidden from owning, and was advised not to participate in any actions that could benefit him personally. Three days later he participated in the mass CFPB layoffs — among those fired were the agency’s ethics officer and their entire team of lawyers, the same officials who had issued the warning (ProPublica, “DOGE’s Gavin Kliger Received Conflict Warnings Before CFPB Firings,” 2025).

Real-World Impacts

Federal Employees

• Personally directed the CFPB 90% RIF — the operation enjoined as unlawful by federal court.
• Participated in IRS workforce reductions affecting tax-processing capacity.

American Citizens (Public Services)

• IRS layoffs affected tax processing and revenue collection (The Atlantic, 2025).
• CFPB enforcement halt during his tenure affected pending consumer-protection cases.

Vulnerable Populations

• CFPB consumer protections lost disproportionately affect servicemembers, elderly, low-income consumers (Senate Banking minority report, 2025).

Privacy and Data Security

• IRS access during this period included taxpayer data — subject of pending federal litigation.
• DoD Chief Data Officer role gives Kliger continuing federal access to the Department of Defense’s data infrastructure and, per the department’s own announcement, “direct coordination with frontier AI laboratories.”

Other Documented Harms

• Documented retweets of white-supremacist and trafficking-investigated figures, and advocacy for Derek Chauvin’s pardon, raised vetting concerns documented in congressional letters.
• ProPublica’s “received conflict warnings” reporting establishes that ethics officials warned Kliger of the conflict before he carried out the CFPB firings — and that he then participated in firing the ethics team that had warned him.

Conflicts of Interest

• Databricks leave of absence: Wikipedia, Revolving Door Project, and ProPublica reporting indicate Kliger remained a Databricks senior software engineer on leave during federal service.
• Up to $715K in CFPB-regulated company shares across seven prohibited holdings: Direct financial conflict during his personal direction of the CFPB workforce purge. The seven barred holdings are Apple, Tesla, Alphabet, Berkshire Hathaway, Alibaba, Bitcoin, and Solana. CFPB rules bar employees and detailees from owning securities in supervised entities; a 2022 Office of Government Ethics memo further restricts crypto holdings when a matter could have a “direct and predictable effect” on their value (ProPublica).
• Ethics warning ignored, then warners fired: CFPB ethics officials warned Kliger the holdings were prohibited and advised him not to participate in matters that could benefit him personally; three days later he participated in the mass layoffs, which included firing the agency’s ethics officer and their entire team (ProPublica).
• Formal ethics complaints and Congressional referrals:
• On May 20, 2025, the Campaign Legal Center filed a formal complaint with the CFPB Inspector General and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, requesting an investigation into whether Kliger violated CFPB ethics rules by failing to divest from the seven prohibited holdings.
• On May 29, 2025, Senators Jack Reed, Elizabeth Warren, and Ron Wyden formally requested that the Department of Justice, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Inspectors General of the Treasury, TIGTA, and the Federal Reserve investigate the conflicts, citing an expert who described Kliger’s actions as “look[ing] like a pretty clear-cut violation” of the federal criminal conflict-of-interest statute, which carries penalties of up to $250,000 and five years in prison.
• H.Res. 259 (119th Congress) references Kliger among DOGE conflict-of-interest concerns.
• Columbia Law School government ethics expert Richard Briffault told ProPublica that despite the exposure, DOJ enforcement was unlikely because the administration has “greatly deprioritized public integrity, ethics and public corruption as issues for them.”

Investigative trail pointers (public records)

Education only — verify independently. Absence of hits is not proof.

Use public-records-research-specialist, corporate-intelligence-investigator, and public-corruption-ombudsman evidence tiers.

Sources

• DefenseScoop, “Pentagon names former DOGE employee Gavin Kliger as new chief data officer” (Mikayla Easley), March 6, 2026
• ExecutiveGov, “Gavin Kliger Named Pentagon Chief Data Officer” (Jane Edwards), March 9, 2026
• GovCIO Media, “Pentagon Taps Gavin Kliger as CDO Amid AI Push,” March 2026
• Breaking Defense, “Pentagon’s new chief data officer to push ‘AI capabilities to warfighters’,” March 2026
• Wikipedia, “Gavin Kliger” (accessed August 2026)
• ProPublica, “DOGE Aide Dismantling CFPB Owns Stock in Companies That Could Benefit From Cuts” (Jake Pearson), April 2025
• ProPublica, “DOGE’s Gavin Kliger Received Conflict Warnings Before CFPB Firings” (Jake Pearson), April 2025
• ProPublica, “Senators Ask DOJ to Probe Potential DOGE Conflicts of Interest at CFPB,” May 2025
• Senators Reed, Warren, and Wyden joint letter to DOJ, OGE, and Inspectors General, May 29, 2025 (reed.senate.gov)
• Campaign Legal Center, formal complaint to CFPB Inspector General and OGE re: Gavin Kliger, May 20, 2025
• The Guardian, “Doge employees hold stock in firms set to benefit from cuts, Democrats allege,” May 29, 2025
• The Atlantic, “The DOGE Plan That Endangers U.S. Revenue”
• Washington Post, “Musk’s DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data at IRS,” February 16, 2025
• Wired, “The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover” (Vittoria Elliott), February 2, 2025
• Protect Borrowers (Student Borrower Protection Center), “Federal Judge Halts Musk Minion From Running an Illegal and Reckless CFPB Staff Purge,” 2025
• Revolving Door Project, “DOGE Agent: Gavin Kliger,” 2025
• Reuters reporting on Kliger’s retweets (via Revolving Door Project), 2025
• H.Res. 259, 119th Congress (referencing Kliger among DOGE conflicts of interest)
• DOGE Track, “Gavin Kliger,” 2025
• Senate Banking Committee minority report, 2025

Factual correction requests: Contact factcheck@patriot.university.

Cross-References

• DOGE — Department of Government Efficiency Policy Tracker
• Russell Vought – Director, Office of Management and Budget