Elon Musk Finds Massive Fraud in the Federal Government

What’s happening: Billionaire Elon Musk met with officials from the Treasury Department over the weekend, where they allegedly guessed around $50 billion per year — or $1 billion per week — worth of “entitlements payments to individuals with no [Social Security Number]…is unequivocal and obvious fraud.”

• Catch up: A federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury Department payment records, which handle 90 percent of federal payments. The order follows a Justice Department agreement to limit access to two "special government employees" within DOGE, with read-only permissions.

• Pushback: Top Trump officials like Vice President JD Vance and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller criticized the judge’s ruling, with the latter calling it "an assault on the very idea of democracy itself.”

New changes: DOGE and the Treasury agreed that going forward, all outgoing government payments will be required to have a categorization code, ensuring financial audits are possible and accurate. Additionally, every payment must include a rationale in the comment field, which will provide a basic explanation for the expenditure — a simple change that could vastly improve oversight.

Sniffing out corruption: When asked why the Treasury Department never acted on tackling the mass fraud in entitlements payments, Musk responded, “Everything at Treasury was geared towards complain [sic] minimization.” With fewer people complaining about not receiving payments, the Treasury allegedly decided to keep over-paying, even with suspected fraud.

What’s next: President Donald Trump expressed confidence that Musk will uncover "billions … hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and abuse” in the Pentagon, which boasts a budget of nearly $900 billion.

• More: Trump also said Musk would investigate the Department of Education, and DOGE has already started targeting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Why it matters: Nothing like DOGE — an independent and powerful oversight agency run by the world’s richest man under the direction of the president — has ever happened before. Musk is working overtime to audit bloated federal agencies, tackling inefficiencies and corruption to potentially save taxpayers billions.