Musk says federal worker email meant to spot 'outright fraud'

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said Sunday the email to federal employees asking them to report back on their weekly accomplishments is meant to spot “outright fraud” from people on the payroll who aren't working at all.

“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” Musk wrote on his social platform X, responding to a post about the email.

“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks,” Musk continued. “In other words, there is outright fraud.”

Musk — who has led the White House effort to expose waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government — announced Saturday afternoon on X that federal employees would soon get an email “requesting to understand what they got done last week.”

“Failure to response will be taken as a resignation,” he added.

The message, reviewed by The Hill, told federal employees to “please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullet points of what you accomplished last week.”

The email instructed employees to include their manager on their responses, not to send any classified information or attachments and to reply by 11:59 p.m. EST Monday.

As with many of Musk's moves and directives, the blowback was swift.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), released a critical statement Saturday.

“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire,” Kelley said.

“AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”

Musk said early Sunday that he already received “a large number of good responses” to the email and suggested “these are the people who should be considered for promotion.”

The new Trump administration strategy comes as Musk takes an outsize role in helping Trump slash the federal workforce. Musk wielded a chainsaw during the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this week, touting the cuts and exclaiming, “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.”

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