Top Dems Launch Probe Into Elon Musk’s Lucrative Conflicts of Interest

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to the Department of Commerce Tuesday as part of a new investigation into Elon Musk’s glaring conflicts of interest.

In a six-page letter to acting General Counsel John K. Guenther, Ranking Member Gerry Connolly and Vice Ranking Member Jasmine Crockett requested information about how Commerce intends to prevent Musk from skirting ethics rules to use the department to enrich himself. 

The letter, shared exclusively with The New Republic, outlined several instances where Commerce’s operations had openly benefited Musk’s businesses. The representatives requested that the department provide a range of communications and documents by April 22 to demonstrate how the officials intended to prevent the billionaire bureaucrat from exploiting the government.  

“At Commerce, where Mr. Musk’s companies have received significant financial benefits and have the potential to receive vast amounts of new business, his defiance of recusal laws and control of Commerce’s operations directly benefit his businesses,” the members wrote. “The known conflicts of interest presented by this arrangement are illegal and must be addressed immediately.”

The representatives argued that Musk had been wrongly classified as a “special government employee” as part of an effort to skirt ethics requirements and that his authority to conduct sweeping cuts and recommend massive layoffs as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency was consistent with being in a high-level officer position that requires Senate confirmation. Still, ethics laws were in place to prevent special government employees from taking part in matters that could affect their personal finances. 

“The law, however, has not stopped Mr. Musk. On the contrary, Mr. Musk’s ability to enrich himself through DOGE is a textbook example of corruption at the taxpayers’ expense,” the letter stated.   

The letter cited several instances in which Donald Trump’s Department of Commerce had been poised to enrich Musk’s businesses, which have raked in a whopping total of $38 billion from government contracts over the past 20 years. 

The letter pointed to DOGE’s mass layoffs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, launching concerns that Musk intended to use contracts for his companies SpaceX and Starlink to fill in the holes he’d created and that he could reasonably access information at NOAA that could give him an advantage over his competitors.

In March, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that his department would begin an overhaul of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program, or BEAD. After four years, the $42.5 billion project to expand internet access across the country hadn’t yet connected a single person, and Lutnick blamed “woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations.”

Lutnick’s promise of a “tech-neutral” approach, which will make way for the use of satellites in addition to fiber-optic cables, could offer a bigger piece of the pie to Musk’s Starlink. The company was originally expected to haul in around $4.1 billion under the previous rules but could rake in anywhere from $10 billion to $20 billion if Lutnick’s changes are accepted.

BEAD’s outgoing director sent a blistering email to colleagues warning that Musk was poised to profit at the expense of the very people they were trying to help. 

“Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” former BEAD Director Evan Feinman wrote in mid-March.

But Starlink isn’t the only one of Musk’s businesses to benefit from the actions of Commerce. 

When Tesla’s sinking stock started tanking last month, Lutnick appeared on Fox News to urge viewers to buy shares of the billionaire bureaucrat’s electric car company. 

“I mean who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk, you gotta be kidding me!” Lutnick raved. Notably, Cabinet members do not typically endorse products, as the Code of Federal Regulations bars public servants from “using their office’s platform to endorse companies and products.”

And Lutnick isn’t Musk’s only ally at Commerce. Michael Grimes, a finance executive who worked closely on deals for Musk’s companies, was recently made senior adviser at Commerce, where he will reportedly head a U.S. sovereign wealth fund that could potentially direct billions to his old friend. 

The letter also pointed to Trump’s dismissal of the inspector general at Commerce, who would’ve acted as a watchdog for any corruption or abuse. 

Connolly and Crockett’s letter set an April 22 deadline for Commerce to provide detailed lists of all Commerce matters involving Musk’s businesses, all steps Commerce is taking to ensure compliance with ethics laws related to Musk’s businesses, and all actions Commerce is taking to ensure that Musk was not receiving information that would give him a business advantage over his competitors. 

The letter also requested the names of any federal employees at Commerce who had been “in any way removed” from their positions by Musk or DOGE, as well as a list of all exemptions that Commerce has received from Trump’s freeze on federal funding. 

Elon Musk, who wants AI to replace federal workers, is now using it to spy on them.

After speaking to 20 people close to the situation, Reuters has reported that officials within the Trump administration told federal employees that DOGE “technologists” are using AI to monitor “anti-Trump or anti-Musk language” at the Environmental Protection Agency. One person also said DOGE is using Musk’s Grok AI chatbot—an aspiring ChatGPT competitor—to make massive cuts to the government.

“Be careful what you say, what you type and what you do,” a manager allegedly told one of Reuters’s sources.

This is a grimly ironic development for Musk, who constantly claims that he and his X platform are bulwarks of free speech. The EPA has yet to comment.

“[It] sounds like an abuse of government power to suppress or deter speech that the president of the United States doesn’t like,” government ethics expert Kathleen Clark told Reuters.

DOGE employees are also using Signal—the app that landed Mike Walz in hot water for a week—to message each other. And on top of that, DOGE employees are working live on Google Docs instead of using the single copy vetting and chain of custody process that is standard operating procedure for the government.

If these allegations of spying, Signalgate II, and the use of Google Docs are true, they’re a very serious breach of security and a demonstrable lack of transparency from DOGE.

In any sane reality, President Trump’s deportation of immigrants based on an eighteenth-century law, with no right to due process, would be swiftly remedied by the courts. But to conservatives, such an action is tantamount to treason.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the high court’s liberals Monday by dissenting against Trump’s use of the “Alien Enemies Act,” drawing the ire of the MAGA faithful. While the court still ruled to uphold the president’s deportation by a 5–4 margin, Barrett, appointed by Trump in 2020, still received vitriol from the right for her decision.

Even a U.S. senator got in on the attacks, along with tech oligarch Elon Musk.

A few commentators engaged in some thinly veiled racism targeting Barrett’s adopted children.

This isn’t the first time that Barrett has broken with conservative orthodoxy in her rulings, showing that at times she thinks for herself, much to the right’s consternation. The funny part is that she is still quite conservative, voting to overturn Roe v. Wade and reliably joining her fellow right-wing justices in rulings regarding religious freedom, capital punishment, and affirmative action. While her dissent Monday wasn’t enough to tip the court’s ruling, it shows that there’s a glimmer of hope on the Supreme Court that it won’t always rubber-stamp Trump’s abuses of power.

China has promised to “fight to the end” in the face of even more tariffs from President Trump.

“If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday after China threatened retaliation against Trump’s tariffs. “Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!”

China’s Commerce Ministry matched that energy.

“The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the U.S.’s blackmail nature,” the ministry said Tuesday. “If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.… China will resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests.”

The Chinese Embassy in the United States responded with similar ire.

“The U.S. so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’ against China are groundless and a typical practice of unilateral bullying,” the embassy wrote on X Tuesday morning. “The countermeasures China has adopted are entirely legitimate actions aimed at protecting its sovereignty, security, and development interests, as well as maintaining a normal international trade order.

“There is no winner in a trade war and protectionism leads nowhere,” the embassy continued. “Pressuring and threatening are not the right way to engage with the country.”

If Trump goes through with all of his tariffs, the U.S. will levy a combined tariff of 104 percent on Chinese products: The new 50 percent tariffs, plus the 20 percent for alleged fentanyl trafficking, and then the 34 percent he announced last week.

Trump’s threats have already caused global stock markets to tumble and will likely only continue to erode confidence in the United States as a legitimate trading partner, as China and its massive economy look to less volatile actors like the European Union.

A mother and her three children were released from ICE detention Monday, after they were detained during an immigration raid in Sackets Harbor, New York, late last month.

Public outrage has overtaken the tiny town—which also happens to be border czar Tom Homan’s hometown—after a woman and three children, grades three, 10, and 11, were among seven individuals detained during a March 27 raid on a large dairy farm.

ICE officials said the raid had targeted a South African national who was charged with trafficking child sexual abuse material but that they had apprehended a total of seven people who lacked documentation. All seven people, including the family, were sent to a detention facility in Texas to await removal proceedings. Homan told the local news last week that the family had been moved to Texas for questioning and was being kept in an “open-air” residential facility, pending a decision on their removal.

“During investigations like that, we have to ensure that any children within that area are safe. There’s a process during these investigations where, could these children—could that family be a material witness in this horrendous crime? Can they provide information and evidence in this crime? Were they victimized within this crime? So the due diligence was done,” said Homan.

Sackets Harbor school Principal Jaime Cook wrote a scathing letter to ICE officials insisting that the children hadn’t done anything wrong. “They had declared themselves to immigration judges, attended court on their assigned dates, and were following the legal process. They are not criminals,” Cook wrote.

“They lived in a house on the same road as a house that ICE had a warrant for. The fact that ICE went to their door is unfathomable. The fact that our students were handcuffed and put into the same van as the alleged criminal from down the street is unconscionable,” Cook wrote.

The arrests sparked outrage across Central and Northern New York. Nearly 1,000 people gathered in Sackets Harbor on Saturday to protest the family’s detention by ICE. The population of Sackets Harbor is roughly 1,350 people.

The family was released from custody on Monday, according to a statement from Jennifer Gaffney, the superintendent of the Sackets Harbor Central School District.

“My colleagues and I are relieved and grateful to share that, after 11 days of uncertainty, our students and their mother are returning home,” Gaffney said.

“In the midst of this difficult time, the strength, compassion, and resilience of our community have shone through. We are very thankful to everyone who has reached out with kindness and offered support.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, pointed out that there was an obvious lesson from the family’s release. “This is a friendly reminder that ICE is not entirely immune to the court of public opinion,” he wrote on X Monday.