Who Is the Anonymous Data Expert Telling Elon Which Cuts to Make?
Since Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) swept into Washington last month, an anonymous X account called DataRepublican has taken the government demolition crew’s supporters by storm.
The account, and its alleged findings of mismanaged government agency spending, has been shared by Musk often, as well as Utah Senator Mike Lee. The account is followed by Vice President J.D. Vance.
The woman behind the account, who’s described herself as a Deaf software engineer, has appeared anonymously on NewsNation, and on several right-wing programs this month, like Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media show, wearing sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt to obscure her identity, even as she’s billed as a government spending expert.
The account accused neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol of being a “deep state agent,” asserting his nonprofit, the Defending Democracy Together, is an “indirect beneficiary of USAID,” the U.S. Agency for International Development, a government agency that Musk moved to shutter.
The argument here was, in effect, that USAID gave money to a nonprofit donor-advised fund that gave some money to another nonprofit that then gave some money to Kristol’s organization — so he’s then benefiting from USAID spending. Donations can’t be traced this way, and this basic misunderstanding of how donor-advised funds work led several pundits to analyze DataRepublican’s claims, with one dubbing it the new “Twitter Files.”
But DataRepublican’s fans think her work is genius. Nicole Shanahan, who was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 vice presidential nominee and financier, recently interviewed DataRepublican on her show, telling her: “While you are not necessarily in this administration, what you have done is extraordinary.”
Conservative host Steve Deace called her a “genius software engineer,” adding “we want to keep her personal identity secure so she is free from corporate media types who would love to do something to intimidate her.”
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So who is this government information data guru?
The woman behind the account shared her full name Tuesday evening, after a man on Facebook posted that he knew her from the Deaf community, prompting DataRepublican to confirm her identity as Jennica Pounds.
Pounds is indeed a Deaf, female software engineer from Utah, who until this week worked as a senior software engineer at an AI lending company called Upstart, a company that has tangled with regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for years.
Pounds wrote on Tuesday, “I recently resigned from my job to pursue DOGE-adjacent efforts full-time.”
But versions of Pounds’ LinkedIn viewed by Rolling Stone as recently as late last week showed she listed herself as a current employee of Upstart. Some time this week, the LinkedIn was edited to show a February end to her Upstart tenure.
Earlier this month, Musk famously tweeted “CFPB RIP” as DOGE moved to gut the agency and the administration paused its work
Replying to Musk’s post, DataRepublican tagged Senator Elizabeth Warren (the CFPB was Warren’s brainchild), writing: “Hey @ewarren look at this.”
Musk has quoted DataRepublican on X at least 24 times over the last three weeks, telling people to follow the account, and replying “noted” to her claim on Jan. 21 that she found “a quick billion” of federal spending for DOGE to cut.
Her suggested cuts were funds going to groups like Global Refuge, a faith-based organization that provides safety and support services to immigrants, migrant refugees and asylum-seekers around the world. Two weeks later, Musk declared at 3:14 a.m. on a Sunday that DOGE was “rapidly shutting down” supposedly “illegal payments” to Global Refuge.
A newly-launched corresponding website DataRepublican.com lets users search for charities and nonprofit officers. A false claim that Jeffrey Epstein was paid by USAID appears to have started with people using the website and mixing up the notorious sex offender with another Jeffrey Epstein.
On Friday, DataRepublican announced she’s adding an ActBlue donor search element to the website, which Musk then amplified, quoting her tweet and saying “interesting.”
At Upstart, Pounds was a Senior Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer since 2023, a high-level position at the publicly-traded San Mateo, California-based company, where she works remotely.
A software engineer who has knowledge of the company told Rolling Stone that Pounds’ position was one of the highest levels an engineer could reach there.
Upstart received Series A funding and additional later funding from the far-right billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and co-founder Paul Gu was a Thiel Fellow before launching Upstart in 2012. Thiel, of course, merged PayPal with a Musk-led payment company.
Upstart has a complicated relationship with CFPB regulations. The company received a special designation from the CFPB in 2017, during Trump’s first administration, allowing it special regulatory treatment by immunizing the lender from being charged with fair lending law violations with respect to its underwriting algorithm.
Upstart was the first company to receive such a letter. The no-action status was renewed in November 2020, and the company then immediately closed its first public offering and began trading on Nasdaq.
In February 2020, Sens. Warren and Cory Booker, and then-Sens. Kamala Harris and Robert Menendez, wrote to the company, expressing concern about the company’s adherence to fair lending laws and asking for insight into how the company made credit determinations.
But in 2022, the company asked for its no-action status to be terminated, the bureau wrote, rather than have the CFPB review “significant changes to its artificial intelligence model,” as the CFPB required, “effectively ending the company’s special regulatory status, and allowing it to be able to make changes to its model without need for CFPB review and approval.”
Pounds’ job at Upstart involved working on that AI model, two sources say, although she started with Upstart a year later, in May 2023.
Upstart’s CEO and cofounder Dave Girouard participated in the U.S. Senate AI Insight Forum in November 2023, telling senators that his AI lending company is an example of AI working well without added legislation.
“In 2012, before even launching the company, we naively marched up to the San Francisco office of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and introduced ourselves,” he stated. “This was not one of the new ‘Offices of Innovation’ — this was the local enforcement team. But what did we know? We were convinced that we were the good guys and were committed to innovating within the law.”
Later that month, Upstart was subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding disclosures related to use of its artificial intelligence models and loans, according to the company’s quarterly report.
Before co-founding Upstart, Girouard was President of Enterprise at Google.
He posted on X in December about the CFPB looking to AI for a new lending model, joking, “Hath hell frozen over?”
“It costs NYC 8-12X more than EUROPEAN cities to build a mile of subway! We need DOGE for every state and city gov.,” he posted in January.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Pounds wrote: “My former employer has nothing to do with my activities. Leave them out of it.”
Girouard and Gu did not immediately reply to comment.
Before becoming DOGE’s favorite anonymous expert, Pounds ran a Github that analyzed election data in Florida and North Carolina, two states she has lived in. Prior to her role at Upstart, Pounds worked at Snap Inc., eBay and Amazon.
Pounds and her husband, who worked for a decade at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also own a distillery in Salt Lake City.
Pounds registered a Utah company called Redata, LLC in 2020. The couple purchased a McMansion with an indoor pool and movie theater in 2021.
The DataRepublican site has a donations section, with options for one-time and recurring donations: “I’m @DataRepublican, working hard to bring you the most transparent and insightful data on government spending and contracts. If you find value in what I do, would you consider supporting financially? It helps me continue this journey, ensuring that I can keep providing these insights independently. Every little bit supports the mission, and I truly appreciate your consideration.”
DataRepublican posted this week that “a generous benefactor has reached out and offered to cover AI expenses,” and she is undergoing a “background check” as she seeks to work with DOGE.
After Pounds posted about what she called her “doxxing,” Trump’s interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, replied to her: “We are here for you, Jennica, just like you are here for America when we need you most. It is wrong and illegal to threaten anyone, and we will not tolerate a threat to a federal worker.”
Martin, who recently described himself as “President Trump’s lawyer,” has pledged to use his office to “protect DOGE” and “hold accountable those who threaten workers.”
The threats Martin referenced regarding Pounds were not immediately clear.
“I join your mother @data_republican in awe and appreciation of your excellent work,” Martin added. “We got your back.”