Elon Musk blurs the line between the dams and the roles of personal business: NPR

President Trump was talking at a Saudi investment conference in Miami on Wednesday, when he gave a cry to Titan Billionaire Elon Musk, sitting with other business leaders and dignity in the audience.

“He’s doing little news lately, very positive news,” Trump said, asking Musk to stay for applause.

It was not clear whether Musk was there in his role as DOGE leader – a project to reduce the federal government – or as a man after X, Spacex, Xai and Starlink.

Musk is a “special government employee”, A role created by Congress in the 1960s This allows parts of the federal government to bring someone for a specific, temporary basis. With this classification, Musk does not have to leave his businesses, but he must follow the laws of conflict of interest and repeal himself when needed.

Ethics experts say that while continuing to run his business as he also works for the government, Musk is blurring lines between his roles in a way that can damage the public’s trust. Musk and the White House say they will avoid conflict of interest.

World leaders meet with Musk

While Musk’s Doge’s team members are continuing their march through government agencies seeking waste, Musk himself seems to be everywhere, often on the side of Trump, but also making solo appearances, as he did on Thursday at the conservative political action outside Washington, DC

Musk was a surprise guest on the main scene. And as part of his presentation, Argentina President Javier Milei presented him with a red and chrome sawmill.

“President Milei has a gift for me,” Musk said as the music was pumped into the room.

Then Musk shake the saw with excited electric saw, shouting, “This is the saw for bureaucracy!”

Taking an electric saw at the bureaucracy is what Musk claims to do with his project known as the Government Efficiency Department.

Video Posted on x Shows Musk and Milei sitting in front of us and Argentine flags to posing for a more official photo, suggesting that they met before Musk went on stage.

Last week, when Musk met Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, there were questions whether he was there as a member of the Trump administration or as CEO of Tesla, who is seeking to expand to India. Musk brought three of his children to the meeting, which was attended by the prime minister’s aides. The setting looked a lot like a bilateral meeting between the leaders; There were American and Indian flags placed behind them as Musk presented Modi with a gift.

In India, news presenters speculated with excitement about the reasons for their meeting. Modi, asked about this later at a press conference in the White House, said he and Musk go again. A White House official who is not authorized to speak about the matter publicly told NPR that Musk met with modi in his personal ability and not as a special government employee. However, later, Musk was in the Oval office for Trump’s meeting with Modi. A press release from the prime minister’s office highlighted Musk’s roles as “Head of the US Government Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) and CEO of Tesla”.

“The Prime Minister and Mr. Musk discussed the strengthening of cooperation between Indian and American entities in innovation, spatial exploration, artificial intelligence and sustainable development. Their discussion also touched on opportunities to deepen cooperation in developing technologies, entrepreneurship and good governance,” Read the press release

Change of hats ‘from the hour’

In frequent posts on his social media site, Musk Ping-pongs between speaking about his work that reduces government and promoting his business ventures, many of which have government contracts or are regulated by federal agencies . Friday, Musk celebrated Trump administration’s justice department by casting a lawsuit against Spacex.

“He is essentially a conflict of interest in the foot,” said Richard Briffault, who specializes in government ethics in Columbia Law School.

Briffault is not just in raising alarms regarding Music’s big business properties creating a conflict with his work in the government.

“Musk seems to be in a position with the White House consent that he can simply change hats with the clock while fits him,” said Don Fox, who was the highest lawyer in the government ethics office during George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

Fox said there are few indicators that the normal process is being followed to avoid conflicts. For high -level government employees, including those such as Musk, who generally involves presenting a financial disclosure report and reaching an ethical agreement with the government’s ethics office to identify potential conflicts and engaging a plan to avoid their.

The White House says Musk will present a confidential discovery of his financial interests by the end of next month and has been informed of ethics requirements. Typically, those discoveries are required within 30 days of the start of work.

“The thing that the public has to worry about is, we don’t know,” Fox said. “Are we taking care of our interests as taxpayers and citizens, or taking care of his business interests?”

In an interview with Sean Hannity that broadcast Tuesday on Fox News, Trump and Musk minimized the risk. Musk said he had never asked Trump anything “sometimes”.

Musk said if a conflict arose, he would repeal himself. Trump withdrew, “If there is a conflict, you won’t be included. I mean, I wouldn’t want it. And he wouldn’t want it.”

The White House gave no examples of Musk that returned to itself so far.

All these questions about Musk come while Trump just ceased Biden’s appointed director and confirmed by the Senate of the Government Ethics Office, which was only a few months in a five-year term. Other The guards are also fired from work across the government.

“Whatever their guards to prevent public officials from being involved in self-enterprise, implementation seems to have disappeared,” Briffeult said.

The nature of his leadership

With Musk’s role, it is almost impossible for anyone from the outside to see what you really are doing. Because Musk is working outside the President’s executive office, there are no public intelligence requirements. However, Musk insists that his work is transparent, as he posts on social media regularly regarding the contracts that DOGE claims to have canceled.

within A last court appearance Challenging the work of the project, the Justice Department claimed that Musk is not a US Doge service employee and is not the US Doge Service administrator. On the contrary, he claimed that Musk is an employee in the White House office and functions as the president’s senior adviser. This description is contrary to the way Trump and Musk have described his work and the work of Doge.

John Yoo, a professor of justice at the University of California, Berkeley, said the idea of ​​bringing an external expert or, say, a family member to advise the president has happened many times before. It even became a court case when the first lady Hillary Clinton is leading efforts to reform health care for her husband’s administration. The conservatives the lawsuit to block that effort and eventually failed, with the District Court in the DC stipulating that Clinton can continue.

“The real rule is to make sure that Hillary Clinton in 1993 or Elon Musk in 2025, all they are doing is to give advice,” Yoo told the decision since the early 1990s. He was clerk in the DC District Court in that Time and said he remembers him well. “As long as they have no power to order anyone to do anything, he stands on the legal side of the line.”

Yoo, who was a senior lawyer for the Department of Justice in the George W. Bush administration, said this is the legal line that the White House is trying to walk with Musk, who for each external observer presents as a figure of powerful in Trump’s administration.

“And that is why the white house produced that funny statement, where those who said Elon Musk has no power,” Yoo said.

This lack of clarity about Musk’s authority makes ethical waters particularly dark, according to Stephen Gillers, an Emeritus professor of legal ethics at the University of New York.

“The hole we are in is the product of two facts: we will never know, surely we never know … exactly what it is up to,” Gillers said. “[And] Even if we knew everything he was doing, there is nothing we can do about him. “

The White House official dismissed criticism as partisan, saying there is no concern in the White House if Musk would follow strict rules of ethics.