U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said the United States may carry less debt than thought and said it could be because of fraud related to debt payments.
Trump made his comments to reporters aboard Air Force One while flying to the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
The United States currently has $36.2 trillion public debt outstanding, according to the U.S. Treasury, which plays a central role in the global financial system.
Trump has tasked billionaire Elon Musk with an ambitious overhaul of the federal government, which has sparked street protests in Washington and accusations that the Trump administration is breaking the law.
Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has disrupted operations at several federal agencies and has raised privacy and security concerns while accessing sensitive payroll and spending records.
“We’re even looking at Treasuries,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “There could be a problem – you’ve been reading about that, with Treasuries and that could be an interesting problem.”
Trump added on Treasuries: “It could be that a lot of those things don’t count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we’re finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought.”
Trump’s comments on Sunday about potential fraud related to U.S. Treasuries raises the question of what sort of action Musk’s team may take on Treasuries.
A federal judge temporarily blocked Musk’s team on Saturday from accessing government systems used to process trillions of dollars in payments, citing a risk that sensitive information could be improperly disclosed.
After the ruling, Musk said the Treasury Department and DOGE had agreed to require all outgoing government payments to include a rationale in the form of a comment and to have a categorization code.
Musk also said that a do-not-pay list of entities that should not receive government payments should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a Trump appointee, said last week that Musk’s team had “read only” access to the payment system and said any decisions to stop payments would be made by other agencies.
