News/Commentary

DOJ probes Elon Musk as part of criminal investigation. Is he getting the ‘Trump Treatment’?

September 20, 2023 | | Print Article

Federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating X owner Elon Musk for reasons that critics believe are 100 percent political.

“Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing personal benefits Tesla may have provided Elon Musk since 2017—longer than previously known—as part of a criminal investigation examining issues including a proposed house for the chief executive,” The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York also has sought information about transactions between Tesla and other entities connected to the billionaire, people familiar with the investigation said. Prosecutors have referenced the involvement of a grand jury,” according to the Journal.

The Journal notes that this new information suggests federal prosecutors are seeking potential criminal charges against Musk.

All this comes a month after the Journal reported that the Department of Justice is investigating Musk’s use of company resources to reportedly build a glass home/mansion for him.

“The house effort was known within the carmaker as ‘Project 42,’ and plans called for an expansive glass building to be constructed near Tesla’s Austin-area factory and headquarters,” the Journal notes.

Musk has for his part denied this allegation:

The Journal, for its part, suggests Musk may be lying by omission by only tweeting about current plans versus former, now-defunct plans.

“Last year, Musk explored building a home for himself on a horse farm across the Colorado River from the factory known as Giga Texas—and met with an architect to brainstorm designs—but ‘put off building it,’ Walter Isaacson wrote in an authorized biography of the billionaire published this month,” according to the Journal.

“At one point, according to the book, Musk suggested the design could incorporate a shard of glass emerging from a lake,” the Journal notes.

Regardless, both Tesla’s lawyers and board members “scrutinized the project” after some employees started asking questions about the “millions of dollars of large-format glass panels” that the company was buying.

“Zach Kirkhorn, who was Tesla’s chief financial officer before stepping down last month, was among those who raised concerns internally about the project. Some employees were told a limited liability company called Peninsula LLC would reimburse Tesla for certain costs. An LLC by that name, formed in April 2022, is managed by Musk adviser Jared Birchall, Texas records show,” according to the Journal.

“Whether Tesla was reimbursed and whether the glass was ever delivered to the company couldn’t be learned. Tesla is one of several companies that has received questions about executive perks recently from the Justice Department or the SEC.”

Many suspect this is just part of another politically motivated attack on Musk, who has become public enemy number one on the left for buying Twitter and transforming it into a bastion of free speech known as X.

The politically motivated attacks began with the Biden administration’s decision last month to sue Musk’s company, SpaceX, for hiring Americans over refugees.

As previously reported, the DOJ alleged that SpaceX’s failure to hire individuals seeking asylum and refugees amounted to “routine, widespread, and longstanding” discrimination against non-citizens.

Even Musk himself accused the lawsuit of being politically motivated.

“SpaceX was told repeatedly that hiring anyone who was not a permanent resident of the United States would violate international arms trafficking law, which would be a criminal offense,” he tweeted at the time.

“We couldn’t even hire Canadian citizens, despite Canada being part of NORAD! This is yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes,” he added.

He’s not the only one who believes this.

“This investigation into @ElonMusk only makes sense if the Biden administration’s goal is to prove to the public that they use the DOJ to target their political opponents,” journalist Ryan Saavedra tweeted Wednesday about the latest investigation into Musk.

Over at The Wall Street Journal, commenters echoed this sentiment.

“The US government’s interest in Musk clearly has grown exponentially since he dared to acquire X,” the top-voted comment reads.

“Billionaire Bezos owns the Washington Post, DOJ has no questions about perks from Amazon to him. Billionaire Musk owns X (Twitter), DOJ has lots of questions about perks from Tesla to him. The Billionaire club gives lots of money to democrats and Biden; but Elon doesn’t. Is their connection to who gets DOJ attention?” another top-voted comment reads.

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Vivek Saxena
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