Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old high-profile operative for the Department of Government Efficiency, resigned yesterday morning, according to a White House official.
Mr. Coristine, known by the online pseudonym “Big Balls,” was a key player on Elon Musk’s team that spearheaded a widespread effort to slash the federal bureaucracy. To critics and many government employees, he became a symbol of DOGE’s flaws: Its technologists were young and inexperienced but brash, with a dubious background for the outsize positions of power they occupied.
Mr. Coristine’s government email account with the General Services Administration — the agency DOGE has used to coordinate many of its activities — was deactivated as of Tuesday afternoon. The White House official who confirmed his resignation was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Coristine could not be reached for comment.
He graduated from high school in Rye, N.Y., last year and was enrolled as an engineering student at Northeastern University when he was hired by DOGE. He had previously interned at a data security firm, but was fired after an investigation into the leaking of internal information. He had also briefly interned at Neuralink, the Musk company that is developing brain implants.
He appeared in a Fox News segment that aired in May on Mr. Musk and his team. The host, Jesse Watters, asked, “Who is Big Balls?” Mr. Musk said, “That should be obvious,” as Mr. Coristine raised his hand.
“I just set it as my LinkedIn username,” Mr. Coristine said of the pseudonym. “People on LinkedIn take themselves, like, super seriously and are adverse to risks. And I was like, well, I want to be neither of those things.”
The moniker even got a mention on “Saturday Night Live.”
Since February, Mr. Coristine moved between overseeing a long list of government agencies and working on projects of interest to Mr. Musk.
Mr. Coristine had been involved in DOGE activities in the General Services Administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security. He was most recently seen working in the Social Security Administration, and had an email address affiliated with the agency.
He was earlier involved in efforts to slash the State Department’s budget, helping to direct plans to close diplomatic offices and fire overseas employees. He later moved on to assist in building a system for the United States to sell special immigration visas, which President Trump has labeled “gold cards,” for $5 million apiece.
Ryan Mac contributed reporting.
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
Nicholas Nehamas is a Washington correspondent for The Times, focusing on the Trump administration and its efforts to transform the federal government.
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