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by Tyler Durden
May 02, 2025
from
ZeroHedge Website
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.
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