Amid the initial criticism from Democrats and the media of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, there was an intense focus on one of the tech billionaire's young teenage allies, who was proudly known by his irreverent online handle "Big Balls."

The White House has now confirmed that Edward "Big Balls" Coristine, 19, has resigned and is no longer a special government employee for DOGE, according to Fox News.

The departure of Coristine, along with several other now-former DOGE staffers and special government employees, comes less than a month after Musk concluded his temporary service on behalf of taxpayers in rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending.

Resignation confirmed

Wired was the first to report on Tuesday that, as confirmed by an unnamed White House official, "Edward Coristine resigned yesterday."

Coristine, who'd been among the first tech workers brought onboard at DOGE with Musk in January, had just been promoted to full-time employee status at the General Services Administration last month, but as of Tuesday, his Google suite account at GSA was no longer active, nor was he still included on a White House contact list of active DOGE employees.

The outlet reported that Coristine had been seen working on multiple occasions in multiple locations in May, including at GSA, but also in DOGE-related meetings at the Commerce Department, the Defense Department, the Department of Education, Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, among others.

Per one named source, former DOGE employee Sahil Lavingia, who worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Coristine was part of a small group of highly trusted DOGE workers who'd been deployed and granted special access to multiple departments and agencies across the federal government.

Lavingia, referencing Musk and one of his closest allies, Steve Davis, predicted that other DOGE employees may soon be exiting government service, and told Wired, "I have heard since Elon and Steve have supposedly departed, they’ve terminated a lot of those that got hired. They're all still probationary, right? There's that two-year probationary period. So there's a good chance that a lot of those people end up getting fired anyway."

Joke username triggered critics

Coristine's young age, as well as his "Big Balls" nickname, was purportedly a cause for concern for many Democratic and media critics of DOGE, Musk, and President Trump, as they felt that he lacked the knowledge and experience to be trusted with high-level access to potentially sensitive information.

However, Wired noted that even though he'd only graduated from high school, Coristine launched his own business in 2021, had worked for Musk's Neuralink briefly, and had some experience working with artificial intelligence bots and computer system hackers.

As for his irreverent nickname, Fox News reported that he'd revealed in a May interview with "Primetime" host Jesse Watters that he originally had used it jokingly "as my LinkedIn username."

"Well, people on LinkedIn take themselves super seriously, and they’re pretty averse to risk, and I was like, 'Well, I want to be neither of those things,'" Coristine explained. "So, I just, I set it, and honestly, I didn’t think anybody would notice."

What has DOGE uncovered so far?

Coristine further detailed in that Fox News interview last month what some of his work had been at DOGE to identify examples of waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending, of which the agency claimed to have found and saved approximately $180 billion thus far, or around $1,118 per U.S. taxpayer -- though that is just a fraction of the initial set goal of $2 trillion.

Those estimated savings come from a "Combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions."