Elon Musk’s group at DOGE is moving to scrutinize the agency responsible for the most federal spending at the direction of President Donald Trump.
DOGE agents arrived at the Pentagon on Friday, a source confirmed to DailyMail.com, and are conducting meetings.
The Wall Street Journal published an image of an unofficial sign featuring the faces of 15 known DOGE agents posted in the bathroom in the Pentagon.
‘Meet the DOGE Team,’ the sign read.
Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has stated that he welcomes additional scrutiny to the department and its spending.
‘We welcome DOGE to the Pentagon, and I hope to welcome Elon to the Pentagon very soon,’ Hegseth said to reporters in Germany.
The secretary is currently in Europe to meet with members of the armed forces and diplomats at the Munich Security Conference.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has promised to work with DOGE agents to uncover waste in the Pentagon
Elon Musk spotted in the Oval Office with Trump advisors
Hegseth said he would work with DOGE to find ways to cut spending, rather than allowing them to cut programs on their own.
‘There’s plenty of places where we want the keen eye of DOGE, but we’ll do it in coordination,’ he said.
Hegseth also voiced interest in cutting climate change programs in the department, many of them enacted during President Joe Biden’s administration under the direction of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
‘The defense department is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat, we’re in the business of deterring and winning wars,’ he said.
Biden’s FY2024 DOD budget request proposes $5.1 billion in funding for ‘enhancing combat capability and mitigating climate risk.’
The Department of Defense has a budget of over $800 billion.
The Pentagon is already preparing a list of potential cuts they have long wanted to cancel, including pet projects of members of Congress who have insisted on keeping active in defense spending funding bills.
Hegseth reassured Americans that the cuts would not deter military capabilities, pointing to Trump’s insistence that the department cut wasteful programs.
The Pentagon has failed seven audits in a row, as it has been unable to account for billions in public spending.
The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia.
Elon Musk speaks next to U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office
‘He’s right to say billions,’ Hegseth said, referring to Trump’s mandate.
Trump continues to support Musk’s DOGE operation, despite widespread condemnation from Democrats and federal employees who have spent the week protesting his cuts.
Musk said he would work to make DOGE ‘as transparent as possible’ and promised to post full details of the cuts on the doge.gov website.
‘Transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust, not somebody saying they’re trustworthy, but transparency. So you can see everything that’s going on,’ he said Wednesday during a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.
