Elon Musk has been helping with President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting efforts.
Elon Musk will be kept away from government decisions involving space, President Donald Trump said on Feb. 18.
“I will not let there be any conflict of interest,” Trump told reporters at the White House in Washington.
He said later: “I told Elon, any conflicts you can’t have anything to do with that. So, anything to do with possibly even space, we won’t let Elon partake in that.”
Musk added during an evening appearance on Fox News, “I’ll recuse myself if it is a conflict.”
Musk owns several companies that have contracts with the U.S. government including SpaceX, which manufactures spacecraft, and Tesla, which produces electric vehicles.
Musk and Trump have said he’s leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which the president has directed to work with agency heads to identify waste and cut costs.
Officials have said that Musk would determine himself if there were any conflicts of interest.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier in February, “If Elon Musk comes across a conflict of interest with the contracts and the funding that DOGE is overseeing, then Elon will excuse himself from those contracts.”
Lawmakers have raised concerns about Musk’s work. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) recently wrote to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, stating that as a special government employee, Musk is subject to federal conflict of interest laws that bar government workers from participating in matters in which they have a financial interest.
“Mr. Musk’s compliance with federal conflicts of interest and other related obligations remains unknown to Congress and the public. For instance, unless you or another senior White House official, in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics, provided a written waiver prior to Mr. Musk’s appointment as a special government employee, Mr. Musk may have violated the federal criminal conflict of interest statute by undertaking acts otherwise prohibited by law,” he wrote.
Schiff is among the politicians who have called for the White House to release Musk’s financial disclosure report. The White House has not yet released it.
