Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense is suspected of spending over $22 million on items like lobsters and ribeye steak during a big spending period in September 2025.
A report by the nonprofit group Open the Books found that in September 2025 alone, the Pentagon spent $93.4 billion on grants and contracts — about half of that was spent in the last five days of the month.
Open the Books, which was started in 2011 by the American Transparency charity, tracks and shares detailed government spending data, including what’s spent on items like lobster tails.
According to the report, in September, the Pentagon spent $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tails, $15.1 million on ribeye steak, and $1 million on salmon.
They also spent $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts and $124,000 on ice cream machines.
Even though the Pentagon doesn’t have to spend all the money it gets from Congress, there are rules called “use-it-or-lose-it” that usually push them to use up the money before the end of the year.
Any remaining funds might be cut from the next year’s budget. So, big spending at the end of the year is not uncommon.
The group’s report also noted that furniture is a big priority for the military at the end of the year.
Since 2008, the DoD has spent an average of $257.6 million on furniture every September — that’s more than five times the usual amount. In other months, the average is only $38.8 million.
A spokesperson from Govly, an AI company that helps government contractors, described September 30 as “Amazon Prime Day” for the federal government, meaning it’s a big spending day.
This type of spending isn’t new for Hegseth’s DoD.
The report also found that the department spent more than $7.4 million on lobster in four different months of 2025: March, May, June, and October.
In February 2025, Hegseth told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that he supported Elon Musk’s former Department of Government Efficiency to help cut down on “wasteful spending” inside the DoD.
He said he expected to find “hundreds of billions” in wasted money.
“We need to know when we spend dollars, we need to know where they’re going and why that simple accounting, and that has not existed at the Defense Department,” Hegseth said.
“We’re going to fix that.”
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