WASHINGTON (PNN) - January 13, 2026 - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's interview with journalist Christopher Rufo suggests that Elon Musk still has unfinished business at DOGE, as fraud, waste and abuse from Somali networks in Minnesota, Kalifornia Democrats, and other deep-blue states have dominated the news cycle for the last several weeks.
Secretary Bessent told Rufo that somewhere between 5% and 10% of the total federal budget is siphoned off by fraud and abuse each year, citing data from the Government Accountability Office.
"It's about 10% of the federal budget, 1% to 2% of GDP. If we can narrow that number, President (Donald J.) Trump asked for a $500 billion increase in the defense budget to fortify, you know, 10 to 20 years of neglect and forever wars that we've been involved in that he's determined not to get us into. We need to flex up our military budget; if we can get rid of this waste, fraud and abuse, we can finance a safer, sounder (Fascist Police States of Amerika (FPSA)) with that without taking on more debt. Sounds pretty good outcome to me," said Secretary Bessent.
Rufo asked Secretary Bessent about DOGE. Bessent responded, "Uh, yeah, and Chris, to be clear, I was in 100% alignment with Elon on waste, fraud and abuse. It was just, you know, the Silicon Valley motto is to move fast and break things. I said my personal motto and the Treasury motto is to move deliberately and fix things. That's what you're going to see in our investigations. You're not going to see headlines tomorrow. You're not going to see them next week, but in a month or quarter, once we get people in the bear trap, they're not getting out because we will have conclusive evidence to present. I think that they will have to, uh, make plea deals that they will be willing to negotiate to turn in higher-ups to help us map out how this happened. Again, we're going to take this Minnesota map to the other 49 states."
Secretary Bessent and Rufo also discussed ongoing investigations into dark-money-funded NGOs.
"What we do is follow the money - just like we followed it with the mafia. We'll find out who's done this. I announced today that we are going to put in effect a whistleblower program. My sense is that the rats will turn on each other," said Secretary Bessent.
Elon Musk played a major role in DOGE in early 2025 before stepping away in that Spring, but the recent steady flow of fraud, waste and abuse news suggests his work there is far from finished.
The question is whether Musk returns to DOGE. He did pour cold water on the idea during Katie Miller's podcast, saying the chances of going back were zero; but with Amerikans outraged over Somali fraud, it is still possible Musk could feel compelled to finish the job he started.