Business · Wired
Coristine, who joined DOGE at 19 years old with no prior government experience
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Published on Shirley’s YouTube channel on Thursday, Shirley claims that Coristine personally pulled data on Medicaid spending for businesses based in California as potential targets.
Key facts
- Coristine, who joined DOGE at 19 years old with no prior government experience, was staffed across several agencies including the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Small Business
- When Shirley released his December video claiming to have uncovered more than $100 million in Somali-run childcare fraud in Minnesota, figures like vice president JD Vance shared it
- The information Coristine allegedly pulled for Shirley was from a dataset published by the DOGE team at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in February
- The intersection of the right’s favorite fraud influencer and one of the most notorious DOGE engineers exemplifies the next evolution of DOGE and the Trump administration’s fight against “waste, fraud, and abuse
Summary
Nick Shirley—the right-wing creator whose YouTube investigation sparked the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota—claims that his most recent video about alleged fraud in California was bolstered by data provided by none other than Edward Coristine, one of the first members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) known online as “Big Balls.” Coristine, who joined DOGE at 19 years old with no prior government experience, was staffed across several agencies including the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA). The information Coristine allegedly pulled for Shirley was from a dataset published by the DOGE team at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in February.