The incident allegedly occurred after DOGE members got access to the institute’s headquarters earlier this year.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) referred a U.S. Institute of Peace accounting data deletion allegation to the Department of Justice (DOJ), a DOGE staffer said on May 1.
DOGE leader Elon Musk and his team sat down with Fox News host Jesse Watters for an interview that aired on Thursday, describing some of the advisory commission’s findings as it audits various federal agencies.
Musk posted on his social platform X in early April, alleging that after his team got inside the headquarters for the U.S. Institute of Peace, they discovered that institute staffers had deleted large volumes of accounting data.
“They deleted a terabyte of financial data to cover their crimes, but they don’t understand technology, so we recovered it,” Musk said in the post.
The U.S. Institute of Peace is a non-profit organization created by Congress in the 1980s to “help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, and increase peacebuilding capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide,” according to the Federal Register.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify the existence of these contracts, and Musk has not offered verification of the contracts or the data deletion and recovery.
The U.S. Institute of Peace did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
On Thursday, a member of DOGE told Watters that the alleged incident happened after the team accessed the agency’s headquarters.
“Hours after we got into their headquarters, we found that their chief accountant had actually deleted over a terabyte of accounting records from several leaders,” the DOGE member said. “Congress would certainly want to know where the congressionally appropriated funds are going.”
He added that DOGE referred the alleged data deletion to the Justice Department and the FBI.
“In this case, we did refer the evidence in the accounting example to the FBI and DOJ.”
The Justice Department and FBI did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
After DOGE investigated the U.S. Institute of Peace, almost all 300 staff members were fired, and a DOGE member was appointed to lead the agency.
President Donald Trump has long advocated for shuttering the institute. Last year, The Heritage Foundation, which has several former members working in the Trump administration, criticized the agency and alleged that it “lacks transparency and has no mechanisms in place to ensure accountability to taxpayers.”