Category World News

Elon Musk and President Donald Trump say they have uncovered huge “fraud” in the US federal government.

During Oval Office remarks on February 11, Trump said their efforts to cut spending had turned up “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse”.

Trump added: “We found fraud and abuse, I would say those two words as opposed to the third word that I usually use, but in this case, fraud and abuse.”

Trump and Musk used the word “fraud” or “fraudster” combined about a dozen times during their Oval Office question-and-answer session.

So far, neither Musk nor the Trump White House has shown evidence of this alleged criminal activity that they have found.

On February 12, during a White House news conference, a reporter asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for evidence of fraud.

“I love to bring the receipts,” Leavitt said. She cited three contracts for $36,000 for diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] programmes at US Citizenship and Immigration Services, $3.4m for the Council for Inclusive Innovation at the US Patent and Trademark Office, and $57,000 related to climate change in Sri Lanka.

“I would argue that all of these things are fraudulent,” Leavitt said. “They are wasteful and they are an abuse of the American taxpayer’s dollar.”

When PolitiFact asked about these claims, the White House press office pointed to an April 2024 Government Accountability Office report that found the “federal government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion” every year to fraud.

The White House also sent a list of dozens of Department of Government Efficiency “wins”, including cancelled media outlet subscriptions and contracts for DEI initiatives, consulting and administrative expenses.

“Nothing they have identified is, to my knowledge, evidence of ‘fraud’ or ‘corruption’. Fraud and corruption are crimes,” said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at George Washington University. “This administration simply has different spending priorities than the last administration. But to label all of it as fraud or corruption is extremely misleading.”

Trump has torn down governmental fraud-finding tools. He fired more than a dozen inspectors general whose job was to ferret out fraud and inefficiencies. He paused the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits businesses from taking bribes from foreign officials.

Government reports show that fraudulent spending is a measurable problem for the federal government. But the evidence that DOGE has uncovered new examples has yet to be proved.

Here’s an overview of how the government deals with waste, fraud and abuse.

Fraud is not the same as waste or abuse

Waste, fraud and abuse are not interchangeable terms.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says waste is “using or expending resources carelessly, extravagantly or to no purpose”. Abuse is “behaviour that is deficient or improper”. Fraud “involves obtaining something of value through wilful misrepresentation” and is labelled after a legal process.

“Fraud is a very high legal standard,” said David M Walker, who serves on the federal government’s Defense Business Board, which advises the Defense Department on business management.

To qualify as fraud, an activity has to be illegal with evidence of intent, which is “the most difficult thing to prove”, he said.

Walker, the former US government comptroller who led the GAO under Democratic and Republican administrations, said most of the examples he has heard from DOGE could be characterised as waste and abuse. Walker offered the Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress passed in March 2020 to help small businesses cover payroll early in the COVID-19 pandemic, as an example of a programme that had fraudulent payments that the government later caught. The US Small Business Administration inspector general later estimated $64bn in fraud.

The Government Accountability Office is staffed with auditors, and federal inspectors general offices have auditors and law enforcement on staff. Both refer suspected fraud to investigators.

“Anytime someone looks at data (spending data, for example), you will see anomalies that catch your attention and warrant review,” said Robert Westbrooks, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee executive director who worked in government oversight roles during Democratic and Republican administrations. “That does not necessarily mean the transaction is fraudulent or wasteful.”

Westbrooks reviewed the White House list of DOGE “wins” and said he saw no evidence of an intent to deceive.

“Waste is in the eye of the beholder,” he said. “Fraud, on the other hand, is determined by a court.”

Before Trump, inspectors general found criminal activity

Congress passed the Inspector General Act of 1978 in response to anticorruption efforts that started after the 1972 Watergate break-in and cover-up that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. An agency inspector general’s mission is to conduct independent and objective audits, investigations and inspections, and prevent and detect waste, fraud and abuse.

Only the president can remove inspectors general. Trump fired 17 inspectors general on January 25, prompting a lawsuit by many seeking to get their jobs back. The lawsuit says Trump did not follow the law that requires him to notify Congress 30 days before he removes inspectors general. (Trump also pushed out a handful of inspectors general in spring 2020.)

Trump later fired US Agency for International Development (USAID) Inspector General Paul Martin following a February 10 advisory that the federal government’s pause on foreign assistance posed financial risks. (The unsigned notice came from the USAID inspector general.) The notice said the government’s pause on foreign aid put more than $489m of food assistance at risk of spoilage or diversion and limited officials’ ability to respond to fraud and waste allegations.

In the past, many inspectors general have found fraud.

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency issued an annual report for 2023 that highlighted federal efforts to combat fraud, waste and abuse. The report showed that the work of inspectors general led to more than 4,000 prosecutions and identified nearly $93.1bn in potential savings.

The findings resulted in about 3,000 suspensions, reprimands and terminations for federal contractors and federal, state and local employees.

Inspectors general in recent years have found fraudulent activity in COVID-19 relief programmes, including $5.4bn in pandemic relief loans obtained via fabricated Social Security numbers.

Inspectors general at other agencies have also found wrongdoing that prompted prosecutions, including a bid-rigging scheme related to NGO contracts funded in part by USAID.

The rain on Friday did not stop.

Nor did the pounding of Israeli soldiers on the doors of homes across Far’a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

Strong winds rushed into houses as doors were knocked down, and the cold bit into the bodies of panicked, unarmed civilians forced into the streets.

In the early hours of the morning, amid an eight-day siege that had cut the camp off from the outside world, dozens of military vehicles and bulldozers rolled up to the camp’s entrance.

Hundreds of Israeli soldiers poured out, swarming through the narrow alleyways. Orders shouted in Hebrew blared from speakers, overlapping with the soldiers’ commands as they banged on doors with the butts of their rifles.

“Open the door! Get out now!” they yelled.

Inside, families scrambled to gather what they could. A mother pleaded to hold her toddler’s hand as he screamed in fear. A father begged to grab a few clothes before being forced outside.

Gunfire crackled between the homes, mingling with shouted orders in Arabic and Hebrew.

“For God’s sake, let me take my bag!” one resident pleaded. “Wait, let me go slowly – I swear I’ll leave,” begged another before being shoved forward.

In his home at the rear of the camp, 55-year-old Essam Awad watched in fear.

The battle for the land

Far’a sits in the northern Jordan Valley, a strategic area of farmland that sustains local agriculture and the isolated camp’s economy.

Israelis living in illegal settlements have long encroached on this land, aided at times by Israeli authorities, and Palestinian farmers have increasingly been blocked from their fields.

Military incursions have escalated in response to Palestinian resistance, tightening restrictions on movement and livelihoods.

Israel launched the so-called “Operation Iron Wall” as a ceasefire took hold in Gaza, trying to tighten its grip on resistance strongholds in the West Bank.

When the campaign reached Far’a, more than 3,000 of the camp’s 9,000 residents were reportedly forced into displacement at gunpoint.

According to UN figures, 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced across the West Bank since the operation began.

Israel’s invasion of Far’a started with a total lockdown, sealing off all entrances and exits, and cutting off supplies and medical aid. The eight-day siege that followed severed food, water, and power.

Once a bustling refugee camp whose residents were pushed out of 30 villages near Jaffa amid the Nakba, Far’a is a ghost town. Modest concrete homes – once filled with life – stand in eerie silence.

Narrow alleys, turned to sludge by relentless rain, were bulldozed, flattening everything – walls, parked cars, utility poles – leaving behind a trail of destruction.

Ambulances were turned away. Journalists were barred from documenting the raid. Red Crescent teams were prevented from evacuating the wounded. Soldiers moved methodically, expelling families – one neighbourhood at a time.

With nowhere to go, families stumbled through the mud, clutching children and blankets, their shoes sinking into the thick mud of the flooded streets.

The fear was just as thick. A soldier’s impatience or boredom could mean a beating – or a bullet.

‘This house was meant to hold us all’

As the soldiers moved towards the far end of the camp, Awad looked out of his window, trying to think. The retired employee of the Ministry of Tourism knew he had no options.

When soldiers burst through his door, screaming at him, he refused to leave. They beat him with the butts of their rifles and eventually drove him out.

“See this house?” he said, pointing at the home he built, now viewing it from the doorstep of his brother’s house, several blocks away, where he had taken refuge with his wife.

“I built it in stages as my family grew. With six children, the ground floor wasn’t big enough,” he said. Between the arrival of his eldest, 34-year-old Dalal, the youngest 20-year-old Ahmed, the house kept growing.

“Eventually, that floor became our diwan, where we gathered every night. The winters used to feel warm here – with our company, with our laughter,” he said, his left eye swollen, a deep cut beneath it and his knee showing the marks of the soldiers’ blows.

“But when my daughters and sons got married and moved out, it got colder. And when my son Muhammad was killed, it turned freezing.”

Muhammad, his middle son, had left for university in Turkiye three years earlier.

“He left once when he went to study. And then he was gone forever a year ago,” Awad said, his eyes fixed on the house but seeming to look beyond it, recalling that fateful day in April 2024.

“Muhammad had come back to visit, just to check in on his family. He didn’t know he was walking into death,” he whispered.

His voice broke. He leaned onto a nearby chair, pressing a hand to his forehead. “My head hurts from all this,” he muttered. “Let’s go inside.”

The father of six walked slowly to his bed, his legs heavy. Bundled up in layers to fight the cold, he pulled a wool blanket over his feet, rubbing his hands for warmth. He moved carefully, his back bruised from the beatings.

‘They took everything’

“You have to leave,” the soldiers told him when they stormed into his house. “But first, an interrogation.”

The questions came one after another.

“How did your son die? What was he doing? Who were his friends?”

Three hours passed before the soldiers gave their final order: evacuate immediately.

“I refused,” Essam said. “So they beat me.”

Bruised and limping, he made his way to his brother’s house at the camp entrance. He knew what would come next. The soldiers would occupy his home for a few hours, maybe a day, then move on – leaving it in ruins.

The next day, he tried to return, but soldiers blocked the way. Two days later, he tried again. Roadblocks had been put up, and that part of the camp was cordoned off.

“Every Friday, my children used to gather here. Their mother would cook. Dalal would help in the kitchen. Sometimes, Samah would visit from Jenin. But this Friday, we won’t gather. The army made sure of that.”

He recalled the weddings, the engagement parties, and the births of grandchildren – all celebrated within those walls.

“The memories are endless. There’s been so much life here. Now, there are only bullet holes”. He recalled how, when Israeli soldiers entered his home and found a kerosene heater still operating after the weeklong siege, they made sure to destroy it.

He also remembered the difficult times their house had seen. “Muhammed was always the mischievous one, the troublemaker,” Essam said, his voice carrying a trace of warmth. “He wasn’t like his siblings – he didn’t love school, resulting in a lot of arguments and quarrels,” he added with a faint smile. “But he was full of life.”

It was several days into Muhammed’s visit when he was killed. “He was just walking down the street when the soldiers shot him.

“Just like that. And then they ask us why he was shot!”

Still, Essam refused to lose hope.

“No matter how much they take from us,” he said, his voice steady, “we will survive. You grow too immune after that much pain.”

The meeting on Tuesday between Jordan’s King Abdullah II and US President Donald Trump ended in tense anticipation of what will come next for the Gaza Strip.

At stake was Trump’s suggestion that the United States “take over” the enclave and expel Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan.

King Abdullah mentioned during an impromptu news conference that an alternative plan to rebuild Gaza without ethnically cleansing it would be crafted by Arab countries, including Egypt, which was already planning an emergency Arab summit on Gaza on February 27.

Hours later, Egypt issued a statement confirming it would present “a comprehensive vision for rebuilding Gaza while ensuring Palestinians remain on their land” and reiterated its commitment to working with the US to reach “a just settlement to the Palestinian issue”.

What is at stake for Egypt?

“It’s hard to know how seriously to take Trump’s proposed US takeover of Gaza,” Jacob Eriksson, lecturer of post-war recovery studies at the University of York, told Al Jazeera.

“If Trump persists, however, it could put Egypt in a difficult position,” he added, referring to Trump’s threats that he would freeze aid funds to Egypt if it does not cooperate.

“At a time when Egypt continues to face mounting economic challenges linked to debt and inflation, this could have a significant impact.”

Since 1946, the United States has given Egypt more than $85bn in bilateral foreign aid, including military and economic assistance, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt.

And Egypt was the fifth-largest recipient of US foreign aid in 2023, receiving $1.45bn, 85 percent of which was for the military sector.

Egyptian journalist Hossam El-Hamalawy said that the aid Cairo receives “is a statement that Egypt is a close ally and is a partner for Washington” and signifies strong political backing from Washington.

But money isn’t everything.

Although foreign support is vital for the survival of the current Egyptian administration, so is internal political peace, which could be destabilised if the expulsion of Palestinians is allowed.

“Generation after generation of Egyptian youth have had Palestine as their gateway into politics,” El-Hamalawy said.

“In addition … [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi] is very worried about the replication of the Beirut scenario where Palestinian resistance operations in one way or another gave Israel a justification to go into Lebanon and occupy chunks of it for a very long time,” El-Hamalawy added, referring to Israeli attacks on Lebanon and occupation of its territory for different periods, including today.

Counter-offer

For now, until Trump stops talking about forcing the displacement of Palestinians, el-Sisi has reportedly said that he will not attend any talks at the White House.

Egypt has little choice but to work with other Arab states on a counter-proposal that they can defend together.

“Any drastic action could endanger important agreements,” political analyst Abdallah Nasef, who believes Cairo will have to compromise a little in the proposal, told Al Jazeera.

“Egypt could, similar to Jordan, offer to take in injured individuals and their families, albeit at a larger rate and number than that proposed by Jordan,” Nasef suggested.

King Abdullah said on Tuesday that Jordan could “right away” take 2,000 sick children.

Egypt has been treating injured Palestinians in its hospitals since the start of the war, and will likely continue to do so in larger numbers when the crossing opens.

“While any significant economic contribution to the reconstruction of Gaza is likely to prove difficult given aforementioned economic challenges, Egyptian officials … would undoubtedly continue to offer its services as a mediator and a political partner,” researcher Jacob Eriksson said, doubtful of how much Egypt could financially contribute.

Reconstruction efforts

Israel has said that it will not compensate Palestinians or help to pay to fix the damage it has wrought in Gaza. Instead, it would be up to regional countries and the international community to implement any plan put forward by Egypt and Jordan.

“One can speculate that, definitely, [this plan] will involve enlisting massive amounts of cash and finances from the Gulf … to speed up the reconstruction process for the Palestinians without displacing them,” El-Hamalawy said.

Egyptian construction companies do appear ready to cooperate with an international effort to rebuild Gaza. For instance, real estate and construction tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa, said in a TV interview on February 9 that he has been working on a reconstruction plan that would require the participation of about 40 to 50 construction companies from Egypt and other countries.

“Egypt could contribute to reconstruction efforts while simultaneously guaranteeing that Gazans don’t need to be forced out,” Nasef said, adding that “They won’t have to if caravans and tents, which Israel continues to block, are allowed into the Strip.” He agreed with El-Hamalawy, though, that Egypt’s efforts would have to be bankrolled by the Gulf, due to Egypt’s economic problems.

Gulf countries have played a significant role in funding the aid reaching the Gaza Strip in the last few months, with the Gulf Cooperation Council announcing in December that its member states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – had collectively given $650m in humanitarian aid to Gaza, along with the occupied West Bank, since October 2023.

The reconstruction of Gaza, where the vast majority of buildings and infrastructure has been destroyed by Israel, will cost far more.