WASHINGTON, April 2 (Reuters) - A top employee of billionaire Elon Musk who is now working in the U.S. Justice Department previously bragged about hacking and distributing pirated software, according to archived copies of his former websites reviewed by Reuters.

Christopher Stanley, a 33-year-old engineer who has worked at both Musk’s social media company X and space-launch company SpaceX, is a senior advisor in the Deputy Attorney General’s office, according to a former Justice Department official and a staff directory listing reviewed by Reuters.

Stanley was assigned there while working for Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that President Donald Trump set up to slash the federal bureaucracy. Musk has said no "organization has been more transparent” than DOGE, but there’s been little public information on the responsibilities and background of its staff.

Stanley boasted about hacking into websites on at least two of the forums, according to archived posts, one of which dates to when he was 19. At the time, he said he had put his hacking days behind him. But a YouTube video he posted in 2014 shows his involvement in the breach of customer data from a rival hacking group, when he was 23.