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.”… Before joining DOGE, Coristine worked at Elon Musk’s Neuralink for several months and founded a startup known for hiring black hat hackers.
In an interview with Coristine 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. Coristine nodded along, telling Shirley that the government must create more opportunities to crowdsource fraud investigations.
Lambert here: Will Rick Scott please pick up the white courtesy phone?
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. In a post to X at the time, the HHS DOGE team referred to it as “the largest Medicaid dataset in department history.” The post also claimed that the dataset could be used to “detect” large-scale fraud.
“After that, I went to California based off that dataset you had helped me extract, and these fraudsters also weren’t even trying to hide it,” Shirley told Coristine in Thursday’s interview.
Coristine said that by open-sourcing data on government spending, vigilante investigators like Shirley who are “more well-positioned” could uncover fraudulent payments. “You are someone who actually went to the places where we were spending all this money and confronted the people and got to know the truth. I think we just have to create more opportunities for that to happen. We have to continue to open source data,” Coristine said.
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.”
Shirley’s videos have become key pieces of evidence for the Trump administration’s fraud and immigration crackdowns.
Lambert here: For example, Medicaid fraud in Minnesota (which Wired mentions, but doesn’t assess one way or the other).
While Coristine is no longer a formal member of DOGE, he’s still working in government as head of engineering for the White House’s National Design Studio (NDS), which is run by Airbnb cofounder and US chief design officer Joe Gebbia. Gebbia previously worked as a member of DOGE at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) tasked with modernizing the government’s retirement system. Coristine didn’t appear to believe DOGE’s mission was over: “I think the cabinet secretaries … are continuing the mission and mantra of DOGE,” Coristine tells Shirley.
Coristine revealed a handful of other strange and unreported details about the ongoing work at NDS. He mentioned that NDS’s current chief creative officer is Nate Brown, who previously collaborated with Ye, formerly Kanye West, on projects like the rapper’s 2021 album “Donda.” Coristine also said that one of NDS’s next big priorities is “freedom” and bringing “free speech to Europe.” Despite failing to provide any details into what that means, Coristine said to expect more information soon.
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