Trump says – “US may have less debt than thought because of fraud”

Trump's comments about potential fraud related to U.S. Treasuries raises the questions…
Photo: AP

U.S. President Donald Trump said his administration was examining U.S. Treasury debt payments for possible fraud and suggested that the country's $36 trillion debt load might not be that high, Reuters reports.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said administration officials who have been combing through payment records in an effort to identify wasteful spending have turned their attention to the debt payments that play a central role in the global financial system.

"We're even looking at Treasuries," Trump said. "There could be a problem – you've been reading about that, with Treasuries and that could be an interesting problem."

He added: "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."

It was not clear whether Trump was referring to debt service or other government payments made by the Treasury Department.

The United States currently has $36.2 trillion public debt outstanding, according to the U.S. Treasury, equal to more than 120% of GDP. Because the U.S. government spends more money than it collects, Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress will have to authorize more borrowing sometime this year to avert a debt default that could have catastrophic consequences.

Trump has tasked billionaire Elon Musk with an ambitious overhaul of the federal government.

Trump’s comments 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 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.

…Following the news, speculation arose that the US could waive some of its debts to foreign countries that invest in US Treasuries, and the financial scandal could then become international.

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