A 19-year-old who was reportedly fired from an internship for leaking internal information to competitors is now a DOGE ‘senior adviser' in the State Department
Teenager Edward Coristine, a member of the DOGE team, is now a senior adviser in several federal departments thanks to Elon Musk. Coristine was previously fired from an internship for reportedly leaking information to competitors. He also worked briefly at Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink.
Thanks to Elon Musk, a teenager with a rocky track record now wields significant influence in the federal government as a senior adviser in multiple departments.
Edward Coristine, 19, was most recently a freshman mechanical engineering and physics major at Boston's Northeastern University until joining Elon Musk's cost-cutting team at DOGE. The department has been busy in recent weeks conducting mass layoffs and scaling back federal spending.
Now, Coristine is reportedly a senior adviser at both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security as part of DOGE's department overlapping cost-cutting efforts, the Washington Post reported. Coristine is also listed as one of several 'experts' at the Office of Personnel Management, the government's HR department, Wired reported.
Coristine is the son of Charles Coristine, the CEO of organic-snack company LesserEvil; Charles Coristine bought the company in 2011 after quitting his job at Morgan Stanley. The company has been profitable since 2021, CNBC reported.
The younger Coristine took a leap into government after he previously interned at technology security company Path Network and worked briefly at Musk's brain-implant company Neuralink, according to Bloomberg.
Coristine was reportedly fired from his internship at Path Network after he allegedly leaked information to competitors, Bloomberg reported. Coristine later posted on instant-messaging platform Discord that he did 'nothing contractually wrong' while working at Path Network, according to Bloomberg.
Coristine did not return messages seeking comment. DOGE and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
At the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, Coristine potentially has access to sensitive information, according to Bloomberg. Democratic senators, including Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), have already spoken out with concern about DOGE's considerable reach and its cost-cutting mission.
'Giving Elon Musk's goon squad access to systems that control payments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other key federal programs is a national security nightmare," Wyden told Bloomberg.
The Washington Post identified at least six engineers under the age of 25 working for Musk's DOGE. One of the engineers, 25-year-old Marko Elez, resigned after the Wall Street Journal reported on alleged past posts that were racist in nature. Musk said later in a post on X he would rehire Elez, because 'to err is human, to forgive divine.' Elez has been reportedly reinstated at the Social Security Administration, according to Bloomberg.
Coristine also has a history of controversial and offensive posts, according to Substack newsletter MuskWatch, which tracks the activities of Elon Musk.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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