Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.
His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial, and his companies have been targeted in at least 20 recent investigations or reviews.
Given Musk’s immense business footprint, he will be a major player no matter who wins the election.
But he has thrown his fortune behind former President Donald Trump and, in return, Trump has vowed to make Musk head of a new “government efficiency commission” with the power to recommend wide-ranging cuts at federal agencies and changes to federal rules.
That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies.
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Legal experts who have studied federal ethics rules said Musk’s interactions with the federal government are so broad it might not be possible for him to serve as a prominent adviser to the president without creating major conflicts of interest. “It is entirely reasonable to believe that what he would bring to this federal audit is his own set of biases and grudges and financial interests,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics lawyer who has served as an adviser to the District of Columbia Attorney General’s office.
Musk in recent years has particularly attacked the Securities and Exchange Commission, which in 2018 charged him with securities fraud for a series of false and misleading tweets related to taking Tesla private. As part of a later settlement with the SEC, he stepped down as Tesla’s chair and Tesla paid a $20 million fine.
If Musk were to get a senior advisory role in a Trump administration, regulators might have to consider how taking action against one of Musk’s companies might affect their budgets or regulatory authority, even if he did not directly push those agencies to back down, Clark said.
