Elon Musk and the DOGE team made a shocking discovery when they set their sights on the U.S. Institute for Peace, with Musk revealing in an interview that the agency had deleted “a terabyte” of records before DOGE’s arrival, along with engaging in even more sketchy behavior, including allegedly maintaining a contract with a former Taliban member.
For context, in an interview with Jesse Watters of Fox News on May 2, 2025, Elon Musk and his team shed light on what the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had found when they investigated the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP), which President Trump reportedly ordered to be dismantled in an executive order in February 2025. In the interview, Mr. Musk revealed that the agency, which was created to “promote conflict resolution,” allegedly had weapons on site, destroyed records to hide them from DOGE, and had contracts with corrupt Middle Eastern figures.
In the interview, a DOGE team member told Watters about the level of corruption that they had found at USIP, saying that they discovered “weapons in their armory,” along with “payments to the Taliban.” He went on to say, “We found that their chief accountant had actually deleted over a terabyte of accounting records from several leaders. So you’d have to ask the question, ‘Well, why would somebody do that?'”
Shedding more light on the situation with the alleged Taliban member, the DOGE team member explained, “They received $130,000 for generic services. And to Elon’s point, there was not actually a clear description of what the contractor services were for.” He continued, “Today, there are over 400 [federal agencies], so there’s been a 100x increase in the number of agencies since the founding of the nation, and thanks to President Trump, he’s now signed two executive orders to start to reduce the number of agencies in the government. And the Institute of Peace was one of them.”
Continuing, the DOGE member explained that their team was able to recover the deleted data “with the help of a few great employees at the Institute of Peace,” adding, “I think the most troubling thing was they received $55 million a year from Congress, and any money that went unspent, instead of returning that to Congress, they would sweep it into a private bank account, which had no congressional oversight, and that’s what they would use to fund things like events at their headquarters and the private jets.”
In response to this revelation, Jesse Watters was shocked, asking, “The agencies are hiding money from you? They’re sending it to the Taliban? They have loaded weapons in the department buildings at the Institute of Peace? The Institute of Peace?” He continued, “So, this is a cover-up.” Mr. Musk responded, “This one, yes, a cover-up…they delete a vast amount of financial information. That’s really the definition of a cover-up.”
Moving on, Watters asked the DOGE team what the protocol was in a case like this, saying, “When you catch them going Hillary style on their computers, do you refer this to the Department of Justice?” In response, a DOGE employee said, “In this case, we did refer the evidence in the accounting example to the FBI and DOJ. We’re proud to do that. So yes, we did.”
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In an X post from March 31, 2025, DOGE provided more background on their findings when they looked into USIP, writing, “In the past 10 years, USIP has transferred ~$13M to its private Endowment, mainly used for private events and travel. They added that they had canceled several USIP contracts, including one that guaranteed “$132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, an ex-Taliban member who was Afghanistan’s former Chief of Protocol.”
Watch part of that jaw-dropping interview below:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video