President Donald Trump on Feb. 7 defended the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) access to federal IT systems and confirmed he directed its staff to probe the departments of Education and Defense.
Trump made the comments during a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday. In response to a question about DOGE staffers allegedly accessing data that could include Americans’ personal information, Trump justified the advisory commission’s actions.
He said that rampant waste in the federal government had gone unchecked and that he was proud of the work DOGE’s staff were doing. He also vowed that “Social Security will not be touched.”
“With respect to some of the investments that have been made on another agency that people have been talking about for years, but nobody did anything about it, it’s absolutely obscene, dangerous, bad, very costly,” Trump said, not identifying the federal agency by name.
He said that DOGE would work with both the Department of Education and the U.S. military.
“We’re going to be looking at tremendous amounts of money ... being spent on things that bear no relationship to anything and have no value,” he said, adding that the federal government is illegally wasting “trillions of dollars.”
“I’m very proud of the job that this group of young people, generally young people, but very smart people, [are] doing. They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption.”
When asked if he would like DOGE to look at federal spending for assistance and entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, Trump promised that the latter would “not be touched.”
“We have illegal immigrants on Social Security, and we’re going to find out who they are and take them out,” Trump said. He also said that his administration had found illegal immigrants receiving Medicare.
“We’re not going to stand for that. So we’re going to strengthen our Social Security,” the president said. “We’re not going to touch it other than to make it stronger. But we have people that shouldn’t be on, and those people we have to weed out.”
Trump’s comments come as several Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns over potential breaches of congressional oversight in allowing DOGE staffers to probe IT systems at federal agencies.
So far, The Epoch Times has confirmed DOGE accessed computer systems at the Treasury Department, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Anonymously sourced reports have alleged that DOGE accessed IT systems at multiple other federal agencies, but The Epoch Times has not independently confirmed those developments.
On Feb. 5, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee blocked an effort by Democrats to subpoena tech billionaire Elon Musk, who leads DOGE, and compel his testimony before Congress.
Many Democrats have criticized the Trump administration for giving so much authority to an unelected “special government employee,” particularly because of Musk’s business ventures such as SpaceX being entwined with multiple federal agencies, some of which issue his aerospace company large contracts.
The White House recently said that Musk would recuse himself from any issues where conflicts of interest may arise due to his business dealings, which also include Tesla and social media platform X.
