Scale of Musk's DOGE Conflicts of Interest 'Should Alarm Every American'

Elon Musk, the world's richest person and de facto head of the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, "has had a direct business interest in over 70% of the agencies and departments targeted by DOGE since its inception," according to an analysis published Thursday by a leading U.S. consumer advocacy group.

The Public Citizen report, titled Duplicitous Oligarchy Grifting Endlessly, "maps out the entities DOGE has targeted and identifies which ones carry a known conflict of interest for Elon Musk's business entanglements" as the executive office leads the Trump administration's purge of federal agencies.

"The wealthiest man in the world is working to dismantle the very same federal departments and agencies tasked with overseeing and placing checks on his businesses," the report states. "He also now is adjacent to and could potentially access sensitive and potentially proprietary information from his biggest competitors in the various industries that have made him wealthy. He also has personal business interests that could shape what his DOGE project considers ripe for cuts."

Elizabeth Beavers, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch, said in a statement that "it should alarm every American that the wealthiest man in the world has spent the last several months dismantling the same departments and agencies tasked with regulating his businesses."

"Musk's role as the most powerful person in government makes it highly unlikely that any regulator will crack down on his corporations and surely will make agency leaders look more favorably at Musk companies as potential government contractors," Beavers added.

The report considers Musk—who has signaled he will leave DOGE—to have a conflict of interest with a federal agency when one of his companies has received contracts or grants from the department, has an interest in its proprietary data, and is subject to its regulation or enforcement regime.

Public Citizen's analysis highlights interests with federal agencies including:

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Musk wants to abolish, would be in charge of regulating a proposed payments processing partnership between Visa and Musk's social media platform X;
• Department of Justice, which is investigating electric automaker Tesla and possibly Musk as its CEO;
• Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates Musk's SpaceX;
• Food and Drug Administration, where some of the more than 1,000 fired staffers were reviewing Musk's Nueralink brain implants;
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has awarded SpaceX approximately $15 billion in contracts;
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates Teslas, was hit with a 10% workforce reduction since President Donald Trump took office;
• Securities and Exchange Commission, which has ongoing enforcement actions against Musk, including fines as high as $150 million for failing to file disclosure forms regarding shares of Twitter, which he bought in 2022; and
• United States Agency for International Development, which was investigating whether Russia had improperly gained access to Musk's Starlink satellite internet system.

Musk—whose companies have tens of billions of dollars worth of government contracts—also has conflicts of interest with the departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Energy. SpaceX, for example, holds Pentagon contracts worth around $8 billion, including nearly $6 billion for the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 program.

Critics have laughed off the White House's assertion that Musk would self-police his conflicts of interest by recusing himself when DOGE and his business interests overlap.

"The report's findings make clear that this approach is deeply and incurably flawed—and that urgent action by Congress is required to safeguard the government from Musk's self-dealing and grift," Public Citizen said.