WASHINGTON — US Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked Donald Trump's transition team to hold Elon Musk to the same ethics standards as other transition members, putting oversight of the unusually powerful presidential adviser in the spotlight.
The billionaire CEO of Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, as well as the owner of social media platform X, has had an increasingly close relationship with Republican Trump since he endorsed him in July. Musk spent over a quarter billion dollars to help elect Trump, and also owns interests in cryptocurrency and other ventures.
"Mr. Musk's substantial private interests present a massive conflict of interest with the role he has taken on as your 'unofficial co-president,'" Warren said in a letter to the Trump transition team made public by her office on Tuesday (Dec 17).
"Currently, the American public has no way of knowing whether the advice that he is whispering to you in secret is good for the country — or merely good for his own bottom line."
Musk's role as the co-chair of a newly created Trump advisory body that is not part of the US government, the "Department of Government Efficiency," means that he is not a government employee, Warren noted, "but the conflicts he faces are enormous and the need for him to be subject to similar ethics standards is obvious."
A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team noted that the president-elect had stepped away from his own business to go to the White House.
"President Trump removed himself from his multi-billion-dollar real estate empire to run for office and forewent his government salary, becoming the first President to actually lose net worth while serving in the White House," Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Asked about Musk's potential conflicts, Trump told Time magazine in an interview published on Dec 12: "I think that Elon puts the country long before his company."
Past presidents have often enlisted industrialists for efficiency commissions, Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, told Reuters.
A key difference in this case is the industries Musk is invested in are in their early stages, Brian said, meaning decisions made by regulators whom Trump appoints are potentially going to transform the sectors they are in, and could put Musk's specific companies at an advantage.
Trump's transition team issued an ethics pledge in November that promises members "will avoid both actual and apparent conflicts of interest," and that they "may not participate in any particular Transition matter which to their knowledge may directly conflict with a financial interest of theirs ... or other individual or organisation with which they have a business or close personal relationship."
Musk's task force aims for a sweeping overhaul of the US government, which spent US$6.8 trillion in the most recent fiscal year and has threatened to fire thousands of government workers.
Among other regulatory changes, the Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Musk's electric vehicle company, Tesla, Reuters reported last week.
Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, told Reuters that he felt Musk's role could endanger national security and public safety. The OGE is tasked with overseeing ethics standards in the executive branch.
Shaub resigned in July 2017, months before his term was supposed to end, after clashes with Trump's first administration. "Taxpayers should lament their money going to serve Musk's interests instead of the interests of the American people," he said.
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