Elon Musk and his DOGE staff softened their tone regarding federal workers while repeating government fraud claims in a Fox News interview held during DOGE's weekly 10 p.m. meeting at a White House office building.
Asked which agency has put up the biggest resistance to DOGE's efforts, one staffer claimed the United States Institute of Peace had "loaded guns" inside before alleging the agency had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban and its chief accountant deleted over a terabyte of accounting records from several years in what Musk called a "cover up."
“It’s certainly illegal to delete accounting records that they that Congress would certainly want to know where the congressionally appropriated funds are going from taxpayers," a DOGE staffer said, adding DOGE referred evidence to the FBI and DOJ.
After months of criticism over dehumanizing the federal workforce, Musk and his DOGE colleagues expressed gratitude for "all the government employees who are helping reduce the waste and fraud"
"I’m not trying to sort of say, well, government employees are bad. That’s absolutely not the case," Musk said. "We are encountering troves of government employees who are missionaries, not mercenaries, who are actually here serving because they believe in what they’re doing," added a DOGE staffer identified as "Donald P."
"Agency by agency, it is filled with exceptional government employees, right?" he said. "When we give them the tools, when we give them the systems, and we leave behind systems to help them do their jobs better, that’s the permanent change, right?"
DOGE's Joe Gebbia announced that for the first time, 25 government retirees are going through an entirely online retirement process. 80,000 federal workers have so far accepted deferred resignation offers, according to DOGE official Anthony Armstrong.
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