By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -One of the U.S. DOGE Service’s best-known employees, 19-year-old Edward Coristine, has resigned from the U.S. government, a White House official said Tuesday, a month after the acrimonious departure of his former boss Elon Musk.
The White House official gave no further details on the move and Coristine did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Coristine worked at Musk’s brain connectivity company Neuralink before joining the tech billionaire as he led the Department of Government Efficiency established by the Trump administration earlier this year.
DOGE has overseen job cuts at almost every federal agency but is starting to see losses itself. Key Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, who was in charge of day-to-day running of DOGE, has also left, along with others.
The White House has said that DOGE’s mission will continue.
Coristine’s youth and online moniker “Big Balls” became a pop-culture meme as DOGE swept through the U.S. government, seizing data and firing employees en masse.
Last month, Reuters reported that Coristine was one of two DOGE associates promoting the use of AI across the federal bureaucracy.
Media outlets, including Wired which first reported his departure, revealed that Coristine had been active in a chat room popular with hackers and previously had been fired from a job following an alleged data leak.
In March, Reuters reported that Coristine had provided tech support to a cybercrime gang that had bragged about trafficking in stolen data and harassing an FBI agent.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
