An employee from the Government Efficiency Bureau, known as “Big Balls,” shared the story behind his nickname during an interview on Fox News with Jesse Watters. His real name is Edward Colistine, and he disclosed that the nickname originated from his LinkedIn account.
Coristine jokingly mentioned, “I thought, why not use it as my LinkedIn username?” This comment drew laughter from Watters and other colleagues, including Doge leader Elon Musk.
“People seem to take LinkedIn so seriously,” he noted, adding, “They really dislike risk, and I figured it wouldn’t really matter.” After setting it up, he honestly didn’t expect anyone to pay attention, which made him chuckle.
The Musk team’s reaction? “LinkedIn is very tired of it.”
At just 19 years old, Coristine has already stirred controversy among Democrats and liberal media critics as Doge tackled wasteful federal spending. Many expressed frustration about having young, seemingly unqualified officials accessing government records to carry out their work.
Regarding his job at Doge, Coristine explained that he’s been examining the US Treasury’s payment systems and spotted numerous outgoing payments that raised eyebrows.
“One of our main goals is to eliminate fraud and waste,” he explained. “So, we started digging into the payment systems, and, quite frankly, there’s no real accounting for the types of payments processed.” He emphasized, “Just look at specific line items—$20 million here and there—and for much of the system, it’s like, ‘We really don’t know what’s happening.’”
He added that the distribution system for taxpayer funds “is literally unchecked and not accountable to American taxpayers. It opens the door for fraud, waste, and abuse.”
Recently, the US Treasury and Doge came across troubling payment requests amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars after a review of the automated payment system. They found $334 million in improper requests linked to invalid or missing budget codes.
