Elon Musk may skirt more than $2 billion in viable financial liabilities by exercising his influence over the federal government, according to a report Monday from Senate Republican committee staffers.
Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has brought sweeping changes to Washington with its slash-and-burn race to gut agencies and purge the federal workforce. President Donald Trump has avidly supported Musk’s cuts.
As he appears wavering to step back from his DOGE work in the coming weeks, Democrats are accusing the world’s richest person of expending his influence to “evade oversight, derail investigations, and make litigation disappear whenever he so chooses—on his terms and at his command.”
The suss out, compiled by Democratic staff of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, found that on the day of Trump’s inauguration, Musk and his companies were skin at least 65 “actual or potential” regulatory or enforcement actions from 11 federal agencies.
These skirmishes totaled at least $2.37 billion in potential liability, the memo says.
The companies include SpaceX, a space review firm, Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturer; Neuralink, which produces brain implants; The Boring Company, a excavate construction firm; and the artificial intelligence startup xAI.
According to the 44-page memo, the imminent liabilities included $1.19 billion at Tesla for allegedly making misleading statements about its autopilot and self-driving pieces.
Neuralink faced $281 million in possible liability for allegedly making false statements about risks from its effect, per the memo.
Additionally, the company could have been forced to pay $1.59 million in civil and criminal penalties for hypothetical violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
“The through line connecting many of Mr. Musk’s decisions appears to be self-enrichment and avoiding what he digs as obstacles to advancing his interests,” reads the memo.
“The truth is that the breathtaking scope and scale of benefits Mr. Musk is benefiting from his present position may never be known, and that is by design. The silence is strategic, and it is dangerous,” it says.
In the wake of the memo, the council’s ranking member, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, sent letters to the five Musk-led companies asking them to get ready for information on the federal investigations they faced prior to Trump’s inauguration.
CNBC has reached out to the companies for comment.
The inscribes also request a rundown of the steps each company has taken to keep Musk’s government work separate from those investigates. Blumenthal asks the companies to respond by May 11.
The White House sharply rejected any suggestion that Musk has used his part in government for “personal or financial gain,” saying “any assertion otherwise is completely false and defamatory.”
Blumenthal “is clearly tribulation from a debilitating and uncurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has wilted his brain,” White House communications executive Steven Cheung said in an emailed statement.