Elon Musk’s government waste hunters got tipped off to a juicy new target.
It’s a scandal that will leave Americans furious.
And Elon Musk just found his next target that will have these corrupt HUD bureaucrats running scared.
Ernst hands Musk’s DOGE team their next big investigation
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) just delivered a gift-wrapped scandal to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) investigators.
In a blistering letter sent Monday to HUD Secretary Scott Turner, Ernst detailed how bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development have been exploiting a program called “taxpayer-funded union time” (TFUT) to line their pockets while doing virtually no work for the American people.
“From launching real estate careers to sitting in jail cells, HUD bureaucrats have been quite busy while claiming to be on taxpayer-funded union time,” Ernst said. “Meanwhile, they have put the important work of serving the American people on the back burner.”
This explosive revelation is exactly the kind of government waste that Musk’s DOGE team was created to eliminate.
Florida real estate agent pocketed Washington D.C. salary
The most outrageous case involves a HUD employee who was supposedly working in Washington, D.C., but was actually living in Florida and running a real estate business – all while collecting his government paycheck.
Ernst’s investigation found that this bureaucrat was even collecting the higher “locality pay” given to federal employees in the expensive D.C. area while actually living in Port Saint Lucie, Florida.
In her letter, Ernst wrote, “Corroborating the allegations that this individual lives in Florida instead of Washington, D.C. are a series of legal documents he signed in which he claims his residence to be in Port Saint Lucie, Florida.”
The bureaucrat’s paper trail included “These documents include, but are not limited to, two housing discrimination complaints, one signed in 2019 and the other 2020 (filed with the Florida Commission on Human Relations), as well as annual Limited Liability Company (LLC) disclosures signed each year between 2017 and the present, in which the LLC’s principal place of business is listed as Florida.”
Ernst sarcastically noted, “Perhaps this purported HUD employee conducts the entirety of his real estate business outside of the hours for which he draws a federal paycheck,” adding, “Somehow, I doubt it.”
Vacation and jail time on the taxpayer dime
The scandal gets even more outrageous.
According to a whistleblower who contacted Ernst’s office, another HUD employee used taxpayer-funded union time to attend a training conference in Puerto Rico – and then added an extra week of vacation in the tropical paradise.
But perhaps the most shocking case was a HUD employee who continued receiving his taxpayer-funded salary while serving jail time for multiple DUI offenses.
This employee was only fired after allegedly embezzling $20,000 from the American Federation of Government Employees.
Musk’s DOGE team primed to pounce
This kind of egregious waste is exactly what President Trump and Elon Musk have vowed to eliminate.
The Department of Government Efficiency was established by Trump, with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the initial co-founders to identify wasteful spending to slash across multiple federal agencies.
Sources close to the administration say Musk is furious about this level of abuse and could make HUD’s taxpayer-funded union time a priority target.
The scale of the problem is massive. According to data from the Office of Personnel Management cited by Ernst, federal employees spent 2.6 million hours – the equivalent of nearly 300 years – on union activities in fiscal year 2019 alone.
This cost American taxpayers at least $135 million.
Trump administration cleaning house
President Trump made draining the swamp a centerpiece of his campaign, and the Musk-led DOGE team is a key part of that strategy.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner, who was appointed by President Trump earlier this year, now faces pressure to address these abuses immediately or potentially face scrutiny from Musk’s efficiency experts.
“I look forward to Secretary Turner getting the house in order at HUD and ensuring that federal employees serve the American people and not themselves,” Ernst said.
So far, HUD has not responded to requests for comment on Ernst’s letter.
Ernst’s office also received information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about their use of taxpayer-funded union time for fiscal years 2023 and 2024, suggesting that her investigation – and potentially Musk’s – may expand to other federal agencies.
With Musk’s reputation for swift and decisive action, bureaucrats across Washington are bracing for a reckoning.
