Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and his team have revealed shocking examples of waste and mismanagement within the U.S. government, exposing billions of dollars in misused COVID relief funds and questionable contracts, including one with a former Taliban member.
DOGE staffer Steve Davis told Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime that a $4 billion coronavirus fund allocated to the Department of Education had virtually no oversight. “There was a $4 billion COVID fund in the Department of Education, and there was no receipts required, so people could draw down on it, and when people looked into it—it wasn’t us, it was before us—they found the money was used to rent out Caesar’s Palace for parties, rent out stadiums,” Davis said. He added that DOGE implemented a simple fix: requiring receipts for withdrawals. “That was the only change that was made,” Davis noted. “And upon doing so, nobody drew down any money.”
Musk didn’t hold back, saying that government employees were “basically partying on the taxpayer’s money.”
The investigation didn’t stop there. At the U.S. Institute of Peace—an agency meant to promote global conflict resolution—DOGE uncovered even more troubling findings. A staffer revealed to Watters that the agency had a $130,000 contract with a former Taliban member for “generic services” with no clear description of the work. “We found that they were spending money on private jets and even had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban,” the staffer explained. “It was a contractor, they received $130,000 for generic services—and to Elon’s point—there was no actually a clear description of what the contract services were for.”
The situation escalated when DOGE entered the Institute’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. “Just a few hours after we got into their headquarters, we found that their chief accountant had deleted over a terabyte of accounting records,” the staffer said. “You have to ask the question: why would someone do that? The DOGE team, fortunately, was able to recover the data with the help of a few great employees at the Institute of Peace.” Musk called the incident “the definition of a cover-up.”
The recovered evidence was referred to the FBI and Department of Justice for further investigation. “In this case, we did refer the evidence in the accounting example to the FBI and DOJ,” the staffer concluded. “We were proud to do that.”
Amid the bombshell revelations, the interview had a lighter moment when DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, nicknamed “Big Balls,” explained the origins of his moniker. “I just set it as my LinkedIn username. People on LinkedIn take themselves too seriously and they’re very adverse to risk and I wanted to be neither of those things,” Coristine told Watters. “I just set it and I didn’t think anyone would notice.”
Watch the entire Watters-DOGE interview below:
Musk, who has been serving as a special government employee, recently announced he will step back from his DOGE role starting in May, as federal rules require him to leave within 130 days of beginning his tenure. During a Tesla investor call last week, Musk said he would continue supporting the Trump administration and DOGE “to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.”
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles confirmed Musk is no longer working from the White House but remains engaged.
“Instead of meeting with him in person, I’m talking to him on the phone, but it’s the same net effect,” Wiles told the New York Post. “He’s not out of it altogether. He’s just not physically present as much as he was,” she added.
“The people that are doing this work are here doing good things and paying attention to the details. He’ll be stepping back a little, but he’s certainly not abandoning it. And his people are definitely not,” Wiles added, noting that Musk’s team continues their work from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the West Wing.
