Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel detailed that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) exposed rampant federal spending tied to certain left-leaning NGOs, which he described as potential fronts for "borderline criminal activity. "
Thiel, founding partner of the venture capital firm Founders Fund, made the explosive claims during an interview with his Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
“I think there were scams. I think the nonprofit stuff is out of control. It’s sort of like virtue signaling is a sign that you’re doing something evil,” Thiel told Lonsdale on his American Optimist podcast. “So much of this left-wing philanthropy nonprofit world was just a cover for borderline criminal activity."
Peter Thiel to @JTLonsdale: DOGE uncovered how certain leftwing NGOs were seemingly fronts for "borderline criminal activity."
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan)
"I think you could prosecute thousands of these people, criminally, for the thing they wanted to prosecute Oliver North for in the 80s." pic.twitter.com/kq2tVpBbe2
“That’s how you shield yourself—you put a virtue signal up while you’re stealing money from everyone,” Lonsdale replied.
Thiel pulled back the curtain on the murky world of government spending, exposing how vague budget descriptions can mask the true destination of taxpayer dollars.
“There’s all the stuff you’d have to really go into the weeds of how it works, but the way it was explained to me, there’s a level five description, which is a line item description of what the actual dollars are going to. Then there are ways these things get summarized. The way they got summarized for a lot of the political appointees was a level four description, where you summarize a bunch of level five descriptions in a level four way,” Thiel explained. “You can have 20 groups providing food to different African countries, and you can summarize that as food to Africa. That’s maybe an accurate description. But if they’re actually all working on the Biden re-election, that’s an inaccurate description. At some point, the descriptions are so inaccurate that the people in the government could be prosecuted for fraud.”
Thiel then argued that fraud in government spending could warrant criminal prosecution for countless officials, drawing a stark parallel to the Iran-Contra scandal that ensnared Oliver North in the 1980s.
“One of the people who looked at this a lot thinks you could just prosecute these people for fraud. This is something like what Oliver North was prosecuted for in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 80s,” Thiel said. “He mischaracterized the money, mislabeled it, and was accused of defrauding the government. I think you could prosecute thousands of these people criminally for the thing they wanted to prosecute Oliver North for in the 80s.”
Thiel joins President Donald Trump and DOGE leader Elon Musk as the latest prominent voice warning about rampant fraud inside the government. In recent weeks, Trump teased to reporters aboard Air Force One, "They found something today that's horrible,” adding. “You'll find out very soon. What they found is incredible."
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Recently, Elon Musk and DOGE volunteer Antonio Gracias revealed that millions of noncitizens were issued Social Security numbers during the Biden administration. Their data, presented in a chart during a Wisconsin rally aimed at boosting voter turnout, showed a steady annual increase, peaking at over 2 million in FY 2024, which ended on September 30. In both FY 2023 and FY 2025—the latter beginning in October and running through September of this year—roughly 1 million noncitizens received Social Security numbers.
"None of this would have happened without President Trump," Gracias told Fox News. "President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases. He signed an executive order. It's never been done before, where agencies could talk to each other and databases could talk with each other."
"That allowed us to connect all this data, to find these people across the system, across the benefit system, all the way to the voting records. It really took a lot of courage," he added.