Each week, The Investigative Journal surveys the audits, inspector general findings, state investigative reports, and records-policy actions that entered the public domain. The past week produced an unusually consequential set of federal audit releases — led by the Government Accountability Office’s long-awaited examination of the Department of Government Efficiency’s “Wall of Receipts” — alongside veterans’ health findings, a state investigative indictment, and two proposed changes to federal FOIA regulations. Every item below links directly to the underlying public record.
Federal Audits
GAO: DOGE’s $110 Billion “Wall of Receipts” Lacks Support for Much of Its Claimed Savings
The week’s most significant release is GAO-26-108615, published August 6, which examined the savings DOGE has posted publicly since February 2025. As of July 7, 2026, the Wall of Receipts reported $110 billion in savings across contract, grant, and lease terminations. GAO found that “some savings estimates are incorrect or lack supporting evidence,” and that DOGE did not use its own stated methodology to calculate the majority of savings associated with contracts reported as terminated. For grants, the report states DOGE did not provide sufficient information to verify the method used to calculate 96 percent of reported savings.
The audit’s specifics are notable. According to the report, 108 of the 264 leases identified for termination on the Wall of Receipts — about $15.3 million of $53.5 million in claimed lease savings — were already in process for termination before DOGE was established, and lease savings overall were overstated by more than $80 million. In one example, DOGE reported $1.7 billion in savings on a Defense Health Agency IT services contract covering more than 700 military treatment facilities; GAO found that in the end no action was taken to terminate the contract or reduce its scope, value, or funding, so no savings were achieved. The full report, with linkage tables to the Federal Procurement Data System and USAspending.gov, is available here.
On right of reply: GAO writes that it provided a draft to the U.S. DOGE Service and six agencies. The Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services provided technical comments; Energy, State, and GSA said they had no comments; the U.S. DOGE Service and USAID did not provide comments, and the report states DOGE “did not respond to our inquiries” during the audit itself. GAO made one recommendation for executive action aimed at improving transparency of the methodology behind posted savings.
GAO: 206 DOGE Personnel Identified, but Ethics Records Were Not Produced
A companion report, GAO-26-108403 (August 5), identified 206 DOGE personnel who held positions in the Executive Office of the President between January 20, 2025, and January 31, 2026, including 27 special government employees. At least 128 had separated from their EOP positions by January 31, 2026. According to the report, EOP officials said DOGE personnel receive the same ethics and records-management training as other EOP staff — but EOP did not respond to GAO’s requests for access to training records and financial disclosures, leaving GAO unable to determine which personnel completed them. For an office whose activities center on federal data and spending, the documentation gap itself is a finding worth noting.
GAO: FEMA Lost 4,300 Employees in One Year and Has No Workforce Plan
GAO-26-108427 (August 4) reports that over 4,300 employees separated from FEMA in fiscal year 2025 — a 55 percent increase over the prior year against an average workforce of roughly 25,134. FEMA officials told GAO the separations produced a loss of institutional knowledge and exacerbated longstanding workforce challenges. The report also states FEMA rescinded its strategic plan in 2025 and did not base its 2025 and 2026 workforce reduction decisions on a workforce analysis. GAO’s conclusion is measured but pointed: without a strategic plan, FEMA cannot effectively determine its future workforce needs, potentially putting its mission at risk. With hurricane season underway, this is a record that merits continued attention.
GAO: DOJ Task Forces Let Officers Operate Before Completing Training
In GAO-26-108468 (August 3), GAO reviewed the thousands of state and local officers deputized onto federal task forces. The report finds that ATF, DEA, and FBI allow nonfederal task force officers to engage in operations — including serving warrants — before completing initial task force officer training on federal legal authorities and policies. GAO recommends requiring training completion first, and also flags room for improvement in DOJ’s misconduct guidelines for these officers.
GAO: Commerce Canceled $7.8 Billion in CHIPS R&D Awards Without a Plan to Meet Statutory Requirements
GAO-26-109121 (August 6) reports that Commerce has disbursed $13.1 billion — about 42 percent — of the $31.5 billion in direct CHIPS incentive funding, and that awardees had completed required milestones. On the R&D side, however, the report states Commerce canceled awards representing $7.8 billion of the $11 billion appropriated for advanced microelectronics R&D and lacks a sufficiently detailed plan or timeline to meet statutory requirements tied to the National Semiconductor Technology Center, the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, and the Industrial Advisory Committee.
GAO: $1.1 Trillion in State-Administered Federal Programs, Most Without Documented Fraud Risk Assessments
Reissued with revisions on August 7, GAO-26-109100 examined 20 federally funded, state-administered programs that together accounted for $1.1 trillion in federal obligations in fiscal year 2025 — nearly 90 percent of such obligations. Only five of the 20 programs had documented evidence consistent with identifying and prioritizing fraud risks; the other 15 did not. Given the scale, this framework report is likely to shape both federal and state oversight agendas.
Inspector General Findings
VA OIG: Half of Veterans Who Agreed to Comprehensive TBI Evaluations Did Not Receive Them
The VA Office of Inspector General published a national review of traumatic brain injury screening for post-9/11 veterans on August 5. The OIG determined VHA screened 94.4 percent of veterans for possible deployment-related TBI — but approximately half of the veterans who agreed to a comprehensive TBI evaluation did not receive one during the study period through March 2025. Completion rates improved in fiscal year 2024, yet over half of completed evaluations were not performed within required time frames. The OIG cited unplaced consults and scheduling difficulties, made three recommendations, and noted telehealth resources were not maximized.
DOJ OIG: Victim Assistance Grant Audits in Nevada and North Dakota
The Justice Department’s Inspector General released grant audits on August 6 covering Office of Justice Programs victim assistance funds subawarded through the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services to United Citizens Foundation, Inc. of Las Vegas, and awarded to the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Grant-level audits like these are the granular records that reveal how federal victim-services dollars actually move through state intermediaries to local recipients.
State Records
Tennessee: Comptroller Investigation Leads to Indictment of Former Murfreesboro Detective
The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office released investigative findings this week, conducted with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, that resulted in the indictment of a former Murfreesboro Police Department detective. Investigators determined at least $2,760 was misappropriated from a confidential drug fund, and the report describes the detective temporarily depositing personal cash into the fund on a self-audit day to make the balance appear accurate. The investigation also found the Criminal Justice Portal was accessed for personal reasons on 14 occasions involving at least 10 individuals unconnected to criminal investigations. An indictment contains allegations only, and the former detective is presumed innocent pending resolution of the case; the underlying investigative report, however, is now a public record.
Elsewhere at the state level, the Ohio Auditor of State continued its semiweekly release cadence with a batch of local government audits on August 4 covering counties, townships, school districts, and housing authorities — the routine records infrastructure from which local accountability stories are built.
FOIA and Records Policy
Two Agencies Propose FOIA Regulation Changes — Comment Windows Now Open
The U.S. Access Board published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register on August 4 to update FOIA regulations that, according to FOIA Advisor, had gone largely untouched for more than three decades; comments are due within 30 days. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency separately proposed amendments to its FOIA and information-disclosure rules, published August 5 with a 60-day comment period, that would allow banks to share certain confidential supervisory information without prior agency approval in contexts such as mergers and hiring. Records practitioners should weigh in while the windows are open.
Whether DOGE Is Subject to FOIA May Reach the Supreme Court
Per an August 5 FOIA Advisor item citing SCOTUSblog reporting, the administration is asking the Supreme Court to take up the dispute over whether DOGE qualifies as a federal agency subject to FOIA — litigation that began with a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington request for internal DOGE communications filed within a week of the office’s creation. Paired with this week’s GAO findings, the case will help determine how much of DOGE’s internal record ever becomes public.
What Warrants a Deeper Look
Three threads from this week’s records merit sustained TIJ investigation. First, the DOGE savings data: GAO’s linkage tables to FPDS and USAspending.gov provide a roadmap for agency-by-agency verification of claimed terminations, and the gap between claimed and verifiable savings can now be tested against primary procurement records. Second, FEMA’s staffing trajectory: the 55 percent jump in separations, documented in federal audit records ahead of peak disaster season, invites a district-by-district look at readiness. Third, the fraud-risk framework for $1.1 trillion in state-administered programs pairs naturally with state single audits — the records suggest child care, disaster assistance, and health programs are where federal and state audit findings will next converge.
The Investigative Journal welcomes responses from any agency or individual named in the records above; corrections and agency statements will be appended as received. All claims in this roundup are drawn from the linked public records.