Warren, Raskin, Merkley, Schiff, Lawmakers Call on Elon Musk to Publicly Release Financial Disclosures After White House Claims Musk Will Self Police Conflicts of Interest
Musk Is Subject to Federal Ethics Laws as a “Special Government Employee”
“Given the scale of your power to carry out sweeping administrative policies and your vast personal financial interests, the American people deserve to know how you stand to profit from your role in the Trump Administration.”
Washington, D.C. – Following reports that Elon Musk will be taking advantage of loopholes in federal ethics laws to avoid publicly disclosing his financial conflicts of interest, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), as well as Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) in writing to Musk demanding he publicly release his full financial disclosures containing information about his potential conflicts of interest.
“Given the scale of your power to carry out sweeping administrative policies and your vast personal financial interests, the American people deserve to know how you stand to profit from your role in the Trump Administration,” wrote the members.
Currently, Elon Musk is exploiting a loophole in ethics law to avoid disclosing his financial interests. The White House has said that Musk will file a confidential financial disclosure report because he is serving as an unpaid “Special Government Employee (SGE).”
“But just because your conflicts of interest are not public does not mean that they are non-existent,” wrote the members.
Even without full disclosure, the scope of Mr. Musk’s known conflicts of interest is vast – he has a financial stake in ongoing federal enforcement actions; his companies are currently the subject of at least 32 federal investigations, complaints, and other enforcement actions, and his company, X (formerly Twitter), is launching a digital wallet that would fall under the oversight authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency Musk is trying to shut down.
In fact, since President Trump’s inauguration, Musk has used his position as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to not just try to shut down the CFPB, but also to hamstring other agencies with enforcement actions against his companies while DOGE workers access critical government data – moves that could benefit Musk’s own businesses.
Regardless of Musk’s status as an unpaid SGE, he is still subject to federal ethics laws — in particular, criminal prohibitions under 18 U.S.C. § 208, which bar him “from personally and substantially participating in any particular matter that would have a direct and predictable effect on [his] financial interests.”
Last week, the White House clarified that “[i]f 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.”
“Absent public disclosure of your interests, it is unclear how the public can have confidence in your compliance with that provision — particularly given that you will be responsible for policing your own conflicts of interest,” continued the lawmakers.
“[T]he public lacks a complete picture of your sources of income, stock holdings, other assets, and any other positions outside of government,” concluded the lawmakers. “Without that information, the American people have no way of fully assessing your conflicts of interest, the extent to which those conflicts may influence your agenda within the Trump Administration, or the ways in which your financial interests are on a collision course with the public interest.”
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