The NYTimes has the skinny.
Mr. Musk has also reaped the benefit of resignations by Biden-era regulators that flipped control of major regulatory agencies, leaving more sympathetic Republican appointees overseeing those lawsuits.
At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s six companies, according to a review by The New York Times.
The events of the past few weeks have thrown into question the progress and outcomes of many of those pending investigations into his companies.
The inquiries include the Federal Aviation Administration’s fines of Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, for safety violations and a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit pressing Mr. Musk to pay the federal government perhaps as much as $150 million, accusing him of having violated federal securities law.
On its own, the National Labor Relations Board, an independent watchdog agency for workers’ rights, has 24 investigations into Mr. Musk’s companies, according to the review by The Times.
Since January, Mr. Trump has fired three officials at that agency, including a board member, effectively stalling the board’s ability to rule on cases. Until Mr. Trump nominates new members, cases that need a ruling by the board cannot move forward, according to the agency.
Trump has been firing Inspector Generals, members and leaders of the NLRB, SEC, FAA all in order to end investigations into Musk. USAID was investigating Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine. He has shut down the CFPB which would have regulated his new move to enable money transactions on X (Twitter).
Musk has claimed that he's policing himself and has no conflicts of interest between his business ventures and his new government role. But experts say that assertion is a joke.
National Public Radio spoke with Richard Cordray, who led the CFPB under President Barack Obama.
"The fact that Musk is now engaged in payment businesses that would be regulated by the CFPB at the same time he's trying to tear down the CFPB puts in sharp relief the conflicts of interests here and how much this disserves the general public," Cordray said. "The whole situation is rife with conflicts of interest."
Last week on X, Musk wrote, "CFPB RIP," with an emoji of a gravestone.
According to NPR, "X, formerly Twitter, announced it had struck a deal with Visa to soon offer a mobile payments service, cementing the card giant as the first major partner in a feature called 'X Money Account.'"
"This service would be directly regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under expanded oversight powers it had finalized late last year allowing the agency to police things like privacy issues, fraud and how disputed transactions are handled at mobile payment apps like Apple Pay, Google Wallet, PayPal, Cash App — and X's money service."
The NPR report concluded, "In taking a hatchet to the CFPB, Musk is not only potentially clearing regulatory oversight of new money services on X, but delivering a win to other Silicon Valley giants, which have for years been fighting against the bureau, according to lawmakers and advocacy groups that rail against Big Tech."
There were several dozen cases against Musk from various government agencies.
As much as he claims that he’s fighting against “corruption” in reality he’s covering up the corrupt practices of Elon Musk. That's on top of raiding the federal coffers for cash, potentially revealing classified intelligence secrets and exposing valuable private data.
The WaPo's analysis has found that the "fraud” found by DOGE so far is merely a drop in the bucket.
In an analysis by the WaPo's Aaron Blake, he made a distinction between accusations of criminal fraud –– of which there is little evidence –– and waste which has long been an obsession on both sides of the aisle.
More importantly, he noted that Trump and his allies are conflating fraud with programs the president "simply doesn’t like or agree with."
As he wrote, Musk made a big deal about discovering that a mine is being used to store government paperwork as a example of the yeoman work his DOGE people have been doing –– only for Blake to note "that mine was actually exposed 11 years ago by The Washington Post, in a story called, 'Sinkhole of bureaucracy.'"
As he wrote, "This has been the story of Trump’s broader efforts to overhaul the government: big, hyperbolic claims without much to back them up. Even if you expand the money supposedly being rooted out to include fraud and alleged waste, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, notes that DOGE has publicly identified 'only about $2 billion in annual savings from specific line items' — a tiny drop in the bucket."
"They seem to be having trouble locating the actual fraud. They keep saying they’ve uncovered fraud. But when pressed for evidence, they don’t seem to have much or any," Blake accused before ending with, "And that’s a problem when you’re using that as your justification for dismantling large portions of the government."
By comparison, the 8 Inspector Generals who were fired by Trump successfully eliminated $183.5 Billion worth of fraud.
The impact of his dismantling USAID will be devastating for millions.
"There are real life consequences happening right now because of this chaos," said one worker, calling the Trump administration's claim that waivers were in place for life-saving assistance a "sham."
"This is resulting in massive humanitarian consequences everywhere for refugees globally who rely on our food assistance to stay alive when they have no means for their own livelihoods," said another.
They pointed to aid programs for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, where full rations of food assistance for one million refugees were due to run out at the end of the month.
Provisions would end completely by April, they said.
"For Sudanese refugees, what is happening is that organizations are already saying, sorry, you can't get your food assistance this month," said one worker, adding that water and sanitation services to 1.6 million people were also being cut.
"This is going to affect all of us. It is. The ripple effects are going to be catastrophic everywhere."
Musk is canceling contracts providing food and life-saving medicine to poor children around the world, cutting daycare and deals with US farmers who may go bankrupt while his own companies have $15 Billion in contracts with the US government and Tesla was just awarded a $400 Million contract with the State Dept for armored EVs.
Who is auditing that deal?
www.rawstory.com/...
“The truck has its fans just like everything Mr. Musk does has its fans, but it has definitely had its share of problems and embarrassments,” Maddow said Wednesday. “And, you know, frankly, from the very first seconds that it was introduced to the world, it has had a large share of not living up to the hype, especially the part about these trucks being unbreakable and indestructible, and having this impermeable armored glass,” she said through laughs.
Maddow marveled at how Musk, who also happens to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, which is currently pushing mass layoffs of civil servants and other drastic cutbacks to the federal budget, “apparently somehow convinced” the government to make a $400 million taxpayer purchase “of production units of armored Teslas."
“So, since I think the only supposedly armored production vehicles Tesla makes are these hilarious trucks, this really appears to be the State Department announcing, putting in writing, that it's going to spend $400 million buying these paperweights from Elon Musk,” the host said while chuckling.
She added that the latest move from Musk and Trump came as the pair claimed “Boy, they sure found a lot of waste in the government.”
“And isn't it great what they're doing? And definitely not at all illegal or profoundly corrupt for the president to put someone with billions of dollars in government contracts personally in charge of deciding what happens to government contracts," Maddow said.
Yeah, “armored”.”
This is like having the mob boss show up at the Police station, fire all the cops and shutter the building while rolling a dump truck up to the back door of the bank.
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Due to the scrutiny, the State Dept has backtracked on their $400B Tesla contract.
