President Trump says he will soon send Elon Musk to audit the Department of Education and the Pentagon to find “hundreds of billions of dollars” in “fraud.” He called finding that fraud a key part of his reelection campaign.

Mr. Trump made his comments Sunday to Fox News’s Bret Baier in an interview that will air just a few hours before the Super Bowl. The president traveled to New Orleans to attend the game with congressional leaders and others, making him the first sitting president to attend the championship game. 

Mr. Musk, in just three weeks, is already gaining access to critical functions of the government and advocating for shutdowns at agencies deemed wasteful by the new administration. The president was asked by Mr. Baier if he trusted Mr. Musk’s accessing sensitive information in the departments and agencies under the microscope — a question Mr. Trump avoided when answering the television anchor. 

“Bottom line: You say you trust him?” Mr. Baier asked. 

“Trust Elon? Oh, he’s not gaining anything,” Mr. Trump said. “In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it. He’s so into it.”

“I’m gonna tell him very soon — like, maybe in 24 hours — to go check the Department of Education. He’s gonna find the same thing” as at other organizations, the president said. “Then I’m gonna go to the military. Let’s check the military. We’re gonna find billions — hundreds of billions of dollars — of fraud and abuse.”

“You know, the people elected me on that,” Mr. Trump added. 

The president has appeared to take a hands-off approach to Mr. Musk’s rummaging through the executive branch, telling reporters that he will only allow Mr. Musk to go through agencies if he has explicit permission. 

When asked at a press conference alongside the Japanese prime minister on Friday, Mr. Trump did not say if there were any agencies or departments that were off-limits to the Department of Government Efficiency team. 

“Well, we haven’t discussed that much. I’ll tell him to go here, go there — he does it. He’s got a very capable group of people,” Mr. Trump said. “They know what they’re doing, they’ll ask questions. … We have very smart people going in.”

“I’ll pick out a target and say, ‘go in,’” he added. 

Mr. Musk has been on a tear through the executive branch since Mr. Trump was inaugurated less than three weeks ago. From the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has already been shut down and moved under the control of the State Department, to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the world’s richest man and his staffers say they are finding improper payments or money spent by “radical-left Marxists who hate America.”

Beyond the Department of Education and the Pentagon, which just failed its seventh audit in a row, Mr. Musk is planning to take aim at the Federal Reserve, which conservatives have wanted put under a microscope for years. 

“All aspects of the government must be fully transparent and accountable to the people. No exceptions, including, if not especially, the Federal Reserve,” Mr. Musk wrote on X on Sunday. He added that it would be “great” to have former Congressman Ron Paul run the audit himself. Mr. Paul has long advocated for abolishing the Federal Reserve System altogether. 

Mr. Musk’s crusade has already run into some legal challenges just 20 days into the job. A federal funding freeze that was ordered by the Office of Management and Budget, and supported by the DOGE leader, has been frozen by a federal judge. The firing of more than 2,000 USAID employees has been put on hold. The buyout program for federal employees — an idea inspired by Mr. Musk’s time as the chief executive of the social media company then known as Twitter — has been delayed, with oral arguments in a lawsuit on the case set to be heard by a federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday.