It’s no surprise that the government is a major client of a man who runs a rocket ship company that can reach the space station, builds armored electric vehicles and owns a network of communications satellites.
But when that man is Elon Musk, who now rubs shoulders with President Trump in the Oval Office, every one of his transactions draws scrutiny for cronyism.
When Mr. Musk sends people from his Department of Government Efficiency to look at agency files, he’s accused of using his “goons” to try to gain insider information for his own companies.
When Mr. Trump fired a swath of agency inspectors general, Democrats speculated it was a move to end investigations of Musk’s business dealings.
The ouster of the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau spurred theories that Mr. Trump was trying to ease Mr. Musk’s goal of turning X, his social media platform, into a virtual wallet.
On the House floor, Rep. Sara Jacobs of California this week said Mr. Musk’s conflicts are associated with: “national security, the aerospace industry, transportation and highway safety, biomedical technology, artificial intelligence, peer-to-peer payment systems, workplace safety and workers’ rights, and data privacy.”
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“It is a long list, and it is why we should keep Elon Musk far away from our government,” she said.
Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor specializing in government ethics, said the world’s richest person is operating in uncharted territory with his new role in the Trump administration, and “there has never been a more conflicted federal official than Elon Musk.”
“Eight years ago, President Trump seemed to relish the fact that the conflict of interest law does not currently apply to presidents,” Ms. Clark said in an email. “Now he is acting as if the conflict of interest and financial disclosure laws do not apply to Musk.”
Mr. Musk owns X. He runs Tesla and has founded SpaceX, the artificial intelligence company X.AI, the tunnel construction Boring Company, and Neuralink, which works on implantable brain-computer interfaces.
SpaceX has had roughly $15 billion in contracts from NASA and roughly $5.6 billion from the Department of Defense, according to USAspending, the federal government’s official spending data tracker.
The company’s federal awards increased under President Biden.
The deals include a contract, initially awarded in 2020, to support NASA’s development of a “human landing system (HLS) integrated lander” that could be worth as much as $4.4 billion.
Quilty Space, which provides space industry analytics, also reported that SpaceX received a $537 million contract for Starlink services for Ukraine’s military.
“We earned that,” Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX, said of the company’s various partnerships with the federal government. “We bid it. We were the lowest price — the best bidder. We won and we execute.”
“It is not a bad thing to serve the U.S. government with great capability and products,” she said.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have assured the public that he is not looking to make cuts that benefit him personally.
The president has designated Mr. Musk a “special government employee,” which brings with it certain obligations. He must abide by specific conflict of interest rules unless he gets a waiver.
The White House says Mr. Musk has followed the law.
“We’re not going to let him do anything where there would be a conflict of interest,” Mr. Trump said Thursday, suggesting safeguards are in place.
That is little comfort to Mr. Trump’s critics, who see nefarious dealings everywhere.
When reports surfaced this week that the State Department had penciled in plans to spend $400 million on armored electric Tesla vehicles, Democrats pounced.
Worry deepened when the Tesla name was deleted from the document and replaced with a more generic solicitation for “armored electric vehicles.”
“They can try to hide this all they want, but this is just the tip of the iceberg of Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, said on X. “Since they fired the IGs, who would’ve held him accountable, we’ll see unprecedented levels of corruption until we end Musk’s illegal raids on federal agencies.”
But the State Department said the $400 million line item was actually a priority of the previous Biden administration — no fan of Mr. Musk, who vehemently supported Mr. Trump in last year’s election.
Indeed, Mr. Trump’s team has been cool to the electric vehicle market in general, with the president promising to revoke a Biden-era electric vehicle mandate.
The anger at Mr. Musk now often outstrips even what Mr. Trump faces.
“There is no longer TDS,” Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs said, alluding to the so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” “Now, it is Elon Musk derangement syndrome.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Mr. Musk runs top-tier companies that run circles around their rivals, so it’s no surprise the government wants to do business with them.
“The challenge for Elon Musk is he doesn’t make money out of connections. He makes money out of excellence,” Mr Gingrich said. “This is called a competitive advantage.”
Mr. Musk, standing with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, said there’s a reason the Pentagon is a major customer.
“If you see any contract where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn’t by far the best value for money for the taxpayer, let me know, because every one of them was,” Mr. Musk said.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.