By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he expects Elon Musk to find hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse at the Pentagon during an audit that the billionaire will lead.
"I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. ... Then I'm going to go, go to the military. Let's check the military," Trump said in a Super Bowl interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, an excerpt of which was aired on Sunday morning.
"We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse," Trump said of the largest federal department.
The Pentagon's budget is approaching $1 trillion per year. In December, then-President Joe Biden signed a bill authorizing $895 billion in defense spending for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
Musk, who the White House says is a special government employee, has been tasked by Trump to lead an effort to slash the size of the U.S. federal workforce. As part of that initiative, Musk aides have sought access to confidential information in computer systems at various government agencies.
Critics say the efforts are likely illegal, risk exposing classified information and in practice are gutting entire agencies without congressional approval.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz suggested in a separate interview on Sunday that the Pentagon's shipbuilding processes could be an area of particular interest for the Department of Government Efficiency, and he characterized the Pentagon in general as full of unnecessary bloat.
"Everything there seems to cost too much, take too long and deliver too little to the soldiers... We do need business leaders to go in there and absolutely reform the Pentagon's acquisition process," Waltz said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"There is plenty to look into in shipbuilding, which is an absolute mess," Waltz added.
Leaders from across the political spectrum have long criticized waste and inefficiency at the Pentagon. But Democrats and civil service unions say Musk's Department of Government Efficiency lacks the expertise to restructure the Pentagon, and their efforts risk exposing classified programs.
Musk's companies also hold major contracts with the Pentagon, which has raised significant conflict of interest concerns.
(This story has been corrected to clarify that Trump said "hundreds of billions" of dollars in fraud and abuse, not "hundreds of millions", in paragraphs 1 and 3)