President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Elon Musk will help uncover “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” in federal agencies.
Trump claimed that the American people want him to find “waste”, and hence, Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), will help him in achieving that goal of finding “billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse”.
“I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. ... Then I'm going to go, go to the military. Let's check the military,” Trump told Fox News in an interview ahead of the Super Bowl.
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“I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. Then I'm going to go, go to the military. Let's check the military,” Trump added.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz also suggested on Sunday that the Pentagon's shipbuilding processes could come under the DOGE scanner. “There is plenty to look into in shipbuilding, which is an absolute mess,” Waltz told NBC.
Musk leads crackdown
Musk, described by the White House as a “special government employee”, has been tasked by the US president to slash the size of the federal workforce as part of claimed efforts to save expenses his administration considers as “waste”.
{{/usCountry}}Musk, described by the White House as a “special government employee”, has been tasked by the US president to slash the size of the federal workforce as part of claimed efforts to save expenses his administration considers as “waste”.
{{/usCountry}}More than 2,000 US Agency for International Development employees were set to be sent on leave by last Friday after Musk's crackdown on the aid agency. The move was suspended by US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee.
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Lawsuits have also been filed against Musk's move to seek confidential information in computer systems at various government agencies. A New York judge temporarily blocked DOGE-affiliated officials from accessing some data pending a hearing in the coming days.
More than 40 lawsuits have been filed across various US courts challenging contentious moves by the Trump administration, Bloomberg reported. Judges in Maryland and Washington state have blocked Trump's move to restrict birthright citizenship. The Justice Department has appealed the ruling from Washington, a move that could potentially reach the US Supreme Court.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement that the “lawsuits are nothing more than an extension of the Left’s resistance — and the Trump Administration is ready to face them in court.”