WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said in remarks airing on Sunday that Elon Musk, who is presiding over a purge of US government jobs, will help find “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” in federal agencies.

Speaking in a Fox News interview set to air before the Super Bowl football championship, Trump said the American people “want me to find” waste and that Musk, the world’s richest man and the leader of the president’s cost-cutting efforts, has been “a great help” in rooting out unnecessary spending.

“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that,” Trump said in interview excerpts released by Fox.

The president over his three weeks in office has unleashed a flurry of executive orders aimed at slashing federal spending. He has appointed SpaceX and Tesla boss Musk to lead his federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

But while the administration has highlighted several government projects Trump believes should be ended or curtailed, evidence of widespread illegal fraud has not been presented.

Musk, a top Trump donor and ally, has already taken unprecedented steps to shut down the US Agency for International Development, laying off thousands of employees. The DOGE reform team also has triggered alarm among critics by gaining access through the US Treasury to the personal and financial data of millions of Americans.

On Friday a federal judge ordered a temporary pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave. A day later another US judge issued an emergency order blocking DOGE from accessing Treasury Department payment systems that contain Americans’ sensitive data.

Trump said in his interview that over the next day or so he will order Musk to turn his government scalpel to the Department of Education, a frequent target of Republican ire. “Then I’m going to go to the military,” Trump said, reiterating his call for a review of spending at the Pentagon, whose budget totals some $850 billion.

Musk’s role faces criticism in part because his companies have had billions of dollars in contracts with the US government — more than $20 billion, according to House Democrat Mark Pocan.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2025