The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell, McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School where he wrestled Under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight which effectively ended his college wrestling journey. Darrell Mcclain is an Ordained Pastor under The Universal Life Church and is still in good standing, he's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master At Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean defense medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Brown Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under six six-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 3rd-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
Elon Musk Tackles Bureaucracy and National Debt
Elon Musk joins us on The Darrell McLean Show to share his vision for restoring democracy by holding government bureaucracy accountable. We tackle the power wielded by unelected federal agencies and question its impact on the democratic process, with Musk offering compelling insights into the urgency of closing the feedback loop between citizens and their government. The conversation also highlights the national debt crisis, emphasizing the critical need to scrutinize defense spending and ensure transparency in the financial dealings of government officials to safeguard public resources.
We uncover the murky world of federal contracts, spotlighting how conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency can erode public trust. The discussion sheds light on the billions lost to fraud and abuse within government contracts, with ideas on how strategic oversight and regulatory reforms could reduce the national budget deficit. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how economic pressures like inflation and rising interest rates affect the daily lives of Americans, and the role of government efficiency in alleviating financial burdens for everyday citizens.
Our exploration doesn't stop at bureaucracy; we venture into the ethical quagmire of politics intertwined with private enterprise. With Elon Musk's business ventures under the Trump administration under scrutiny, we question the ethical concerns of his dual role as a corporate executive and influential government figure. We also examine the firing of inspectors general and the potential implications for oversight and accountability. Join us for an episode packed with thought-provoking discussions on the state of democracy, financial responsibility, and ethical governance.
Welcome to the Darrell McLean Show, episode 444,. Independent Media that will not reinforce tribalism. We have one planet, nobody is leaving, and let us reason together. Today we are going to go over something that we got, that a lot of people wanted a little bit more transparency from the head of DOJ Elon Musk as he sat down or stood up in the kind of wild press conference with the President of the United States, donald John Trump corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars worth much more than that in just a short period of time.
Speaker 3:We want to weed out the corruption and it seems hard to believe that a judge could say we don't want you to do that, so we have to look at the judges because that's a very serious I think it's a very serious violation. I'll ask Elon Musk to say a few words and we'll take some questions. Elon, go ahead. Sure, so at a high level, you say what is the goal of Doge, or part of the presidency is to restore democracy.
Speaker 4:This may seem like a democracy. Well, if you don't have a feedback, it would have to be so. It's a gromitous, can be difficult sometimes. So if there's not a good feedback from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, we fix that feedback loop, and that the public, the public's elected representatives, the President of the House and the Senate decide what happens, as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy. There's no sense that there aren't good people who are in the federal bureaucracy. But you can't have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that's responsive to the people. That's the whole point of a democracy.
Speaker 4:And so if you guys looked at the founders today and said, what do you think of the way things have turned out? We have this unelected, fourth, unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has, in a lot of ways, currently more power than any elected representative, and this is not something that people want and it does not match the will of people. So it's just something we've got to fix and we've also got to address the deficit. So we've got a $2 trillion deficit and if we don't do something about the deficit, the country's going bankrupt. I mean it's really astounding that the interest payments alone on national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking, because we've got a lot, we spend a lot of money on defense, and if that just keeps going, we're essentially going to back up the country. So what I'm going to say is like it's not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses. It's essential.
Speaker 1:So just to answer one question which I think is interesting is I do think that a lot of the American public does not like the unaccountable nature of a lot of the well, I would say is the admin state. I think bureaucracy would be also an appropriate term for it, I think. When a lot of it is said and done, I think the truth is and I think you've heard me say this several times on this show is a lot of the bureaucracy is in charge because legislators don't want to legislate. They do not categorically want their names next to legislation that is unpopular, categorically want their names next to legislation that is unpopular. But the experts have kind of told them is necessary To somewhat give authority over to a lot of agencies that Americans do not actually even know exist, but they are the ones that are writing a lot of the acts and legislations upon which Americans end up having to follow.
Speaker 1:Now, when it comes to the question of the debt and deficit, I think it's very funny because it is the American.
Speaker 1:Debt and deficit is a lot of times is outrageous, but I think it all depends on the time period you're in whether Americans or even politicians think that that matters. I remember the former vice president, former secretary of defense, etc. Dick Cheney famously say debts and deficits do not matter and when it comes to the last Trump administration, the president didn't seem to care a lot about the debt and deficit either. He actually didn't seem to care about the debt deficit or actually balancing a budget. His primary thing was trying to make a deal and, of course, the tax cuts that ended up happening under his administration. So the debt, the deficit, the amount of money that we owe to China and Japan, it is going to eventually have to be dealt with. I do think, just looking at the way the budget tends to be spent, that if you want to really get to the meat and potatoes of all this, you're going to have to deal with defense spending. You're going to have to deal with the behemoth of the Pentagon with the behemoth of the Pentagon.
Speaker 4:Odd that there are quite a few people in bureaucracy who have an ostensibly salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is what happened to USAID. We're just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they're very good at investing in which case we should take their investment advice perhaps but it just seems to be. Mysteriously, they get wealthy and we don't know why. Where did it come from? And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at the taxpayer expense. That's the honest truth of it.
Speaker 1:So you know we're looking at, say, if you look at, say, treasury, for example Before I let Elon go on with that point I do think that's a good point. To look at how people come into government. You can see what their salaries are and then somehow they amass a lot of fortune. I think that is legitimate. I also think that you have to look at people in the Congress and the Senate that you could see how much money they make on paper but see how much they end up taking home every year, and I think a lot of us know it's because they are insider trading. They have a lot of information about companies and about stocks and about everything else that the everyday average American does not have.
Speaker 1:You could see many examples where the family of politicians get rich. The second they get in the office, the politician gets rich and, of course, people in government positions kind of do the same thing. I do think that, just to try to be honest about it, I think it's kind of interesting to hear Elon saying that they make a lot of money off the taxpayer's dime, because if you know anything about Elon's companies, you know for a fact that the major company Tesla would not even be around if it was not because of an Obama grant that they received when the company was on its heels. And a large portion of the money that Elon's company actually makes is due solely to the United States government contracts, which is, I think I've said before, the United States when it comes to the government contracts, and that should be out of the Pentagon where he's doing a lot of these deals. That is taxpayer-funded money.
Speaker 4:So a lot of Elon's companies is propped up as well by the taxpayer Basic controls that should be in place but are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment, and that if a payment is on the do not pay list, that you don't actually. None of those things are true currently. So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It's like just a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building so you can't reconcile blank checks. You've got common fields that are also blank, so you don't know why the payment was made. And then we've got this, a true episode a do-not-pay list, which can take up to a year for an organization to get on a do-not-pay list. And this we're talking about terrorist organizations, we're talking about known fraud, do not manage any congressional appropriation, can take up to a year to get on the list, and even when it's on the list, the list is not used. It's mind-blowing. So what we're talking here? We're really just talking about adding common sense controls that should be present that haven't been present.
Speaker 4:So you say, well, how could such a thing arise? That seems crazy. When you understand that really everything is geared towards complaint minimization, then you understand the motivations. So if people receive money they don't complain, obviously, but if people don't receive money, they do complain, and the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest. So then when you understand that, then it makes sense. Oh, that's why everything. Just, they approve all the payments at Treasury, because if you approve all the payments you don't get complaints. But now we're saying no, actually we are going to complain If money is spent badly.
Speaker 4:If your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and approval manner, then that's not okay. Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on things that matter to the people. I mean these things. It's just common sense, it's not. It's not draconian or radical. I think it's really just saying let's look at each of each of these expenditures and say is this actually the best interest of people? And if it is, it's proved. If it's not, we should think about it. So you know, there's crazy things like just a cursory examination of Social Security and we've got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't. Okay, they should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. They're missing out. So you know, that's the case where, like, I think they're probably dead.
Speaker 1:That's my guess, or they should obviously be a lot of people. Now, of course, when you hear a claim like that, I would like to, just for the sake of the transparency of it, all, name names. If there's somebody on the Social Security role that is still receiving payments and you claim that they are 150 years old, I don't think it'll be a privacy breach of them to say who it is and to see if that claim is true. And if it's not, if it's just somebody whose name is on the roll that they are not receiving any payments, then it's somewhat irrelevant, right. But if there is someone still receiving payments in, those payments are being spent by someone, well then obviously it's fraud. So I do think a lot of what he said is correct, but I also like to name names. We're not as many as currently.
Speaker 4:So we're saying, well, ok, well, let's, if people can, can retire, you know, with full benefits, that would be good, they can retire, get their retirement payments, everything. And then we were told this is actually a great anecdote, because we were told that the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like, well, why is that mine where we store all the retirement paperwork? And you look at a picture of this mine We'll post some pictures afterwards and this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started in 1955.
Speaker 1:It looks like it's like a time warp. Now that part of what Elon's saying is actually true about this back in 2014, about how antiquated a lot of the mechanisms in the government were because of when they were created. So this what he's saying about that retirement and how 10,000 people can retire a day and etc. That is actually very true.
Speaker 4:And then the speed. The limiting factor is the speed at which the elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government, and the elevator breaks down sometimes and nobody can retire. Doesn't that sound crazy? There's like a thousand people that work on this. So I think if we take those people and say you know what, instead of working in a mine shaft and carrying manila envelopes to boxes in a mine shaft, you could do practically anything else and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way. So anyway, so that's an example. Like at a high level, you can say how do we increase prosperity? Because we get people to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles, and so you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there's a higher standard of living available for everyone. That's the actual goal.
Speaker 5:Everyone's very quiet. You're detractors, Mr Musk, including a lot of Democrats. I have detractors you do, sir I don't believe it Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a non-transparent way. What's your response to that criticism?
Speaker 4:Well, first of all, you can ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted the majority of the public voted for President Trump, won the House, won the Senate. The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign. The president spoke about that at every rally. The people voted for major government reform and that's what people are going to get. They're going to get what they voted for, and a lot of times, people they don't get what they voted for. But in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for, and that's what democracy is all about.
Speaker 6:Mr Musk, the White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there's accountability and transparency?
Speaker 4:Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions to the Doge handle on X and to the Doge website, so all our actions, are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been, I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization, and so the kind of things we're doing are, I think, very simple and basic. They're not. You know what I mentioned, for example, about Treasury just making sure that payments that go out taxpayer money that goes out is categorized correctly, that the payment is explained, that organizations on the do not pay list which takes a lot to get there that actually are not paid, which currently they are paid. These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well, so it's got nothing to do with, say, a contract with some company at all.
Speaker 6:But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts?
Speaker 1:when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president, I know, has directed you to look into, are you policing?
Speaker 6:yourself in that. Is there any sort of accountability, check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American?
Speaker 4:people. Well, all of our actions are fully public. So if you see anything, you say like, wait a second, hey, you know that doesn't? That seems like maybe that's you know there's a conflict there. It's not like people are gonna be shy about saying that they'll say it immediately, you'll do it yourself. Yes, transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust, not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but transparency so you can see everything that's going on and you can see am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It's totally obvious and we thought that we would not let him do that segment or look in that area if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watched that also. He's a big businessman, he's a successful guy.
Speaker 3:That's why we want him doing this. We don't want an unsuccessful guy doing this. Now, one thing also that Elon hasn't really mentioned are the groups of people that are getting some of these payments. They're ridiculous and we're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We found fraud and abuse I would say those two words as opposed to the third word that I usually use but in this case, fraud and abuse. It's abusive because most of these things are virtually made up, or certainly money shouldn't be said to them, and you know what I'm talking about. It's crazy. So, but we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that we've already found, and now a judge is an activist judge wants to try and stop us from doing this. Why and why would they want to do that?
Speaker 3:I can't paint on this. I can't paint on the fact that I said government is corrupt and it is very corrupt. It's very, very. It's also foolish. As an example, a man has a contract for three months and the contract ends, but they keep paying him for the next 20 years because nobody ends a contract. You get a lot of that. You have a contract that's a three-month contract. Now, normally, if you're in a small. In all fairness it's. The size of this thing is so big for three months. You know it's a consultant. Here's a contract for three months but it goes on for 20 years. I think I doesn't say that you got money for 20 years. You know they don't say it. They just keep getting checks month after month and you have various things like that and even much worse than that, actually much worse, and I guess you call that incompetence.
Speaker 3:Maybe it could be corruption. It could be a deals made on both sides. You know, I guess the money he kicked I think he A tremendous kickback, because nobody could be so stupid to give out some of these contracts, so he has to get a kickback. So that's what I got elected for that and borders and military, a lot of things. But this is a big part of it and I hope that the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do.
Speaker 3:We got elected to, among other things, fight all of this fraud and abuse, all of this horrible stuff going on, and we've already found billions of dollars, not like a little bit, billions, many billions of dollars, and when you get down to it, it's going to be probably close to a trillion dollars it could be close to a trillion dollars that we're going to find. That will have quite an impact on the budget. And you'll go to a judge where they handpick a judge and he has certain leanings. I'm not knocking anybody for that, but he has certain leanings and he wants us to stop looking. How do you stop looking? I mean?
Speaker 4:we've already found it. We have a case in new york where a hotel has paid 59 million dollars, 59 million because of because it's housing migrants, illegal migrants, all illegal, I believe, just going for president's comments at a high level. Well, what, how, exactly? How do you? What are the two ingredients that are really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half from two trillion to one1 trillion? And it's really two things competence and caring. And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half.
Speaker 4:And I fully expect to be scrutinized and get a daily proctology exam. Basically, my soldiers camp out there. So it's not like I think I can get away with something. I'll be scrutinized nonstop. But with the support of the President, we can cut the budget deficit in half, from $2 trillion to $1 trillion. And then, with deregulation because there's a lot of regulations that don't ultimately serve the public good we need to free the builders of America to build, and if we do that, that means you get the economic growth to be maybe 3%, 4%, maybe 5%. And that means if you get $1 trillion of economic growth and you cut the budget deficit by $1 trillion Between now and next year, there is no inflation.
Speaker 4:There's no inflation in 26. And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So once the mortgage, the car payment, their credit card bills, any of their student debt, the monthly payments drop. That's a fantastic scenario for the average American. I mean, imagine they're going down the grocery aisle and the prices for one year to the next are the same and their mortgage, all their debt payments dropped. How great is that for the average?
Speaker 3:American. We had no idea we were going to find this much. And it's open, it's not complicated, it's simple stuff. It's a lot of work. I can't believe it. A lot of work, a lot of smart people involved, very, very smart people. But you're talking about, anyway, maybe $500 million. It's crazy the kind of numbers you're talking about. You know, normally when you're looking at something you're looking for one out of 100. Here you're almost regressing it. You look for one that's good and you can look at the title and you say, why are we doing this, why are we doing that? And the public gets it. You know the public gets it.
Speaker 6:You see the polls the public is saying. Senator Rand Paul today said that doge cuts will ultimately need a vote in Congress. Do you agree with that? Is that the plan?
Speaker 3:I really don't know. I know this. We're finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse. If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse, it's fine with me. I think we'll get the vote, although there'll be some people that wouldn't vote. And how could a judge want to hold us back from finding Congress? If we do need a vote, I think we'd get a very easy vote because we have a crack record now. We've already found billions of dollars of abuse, incompetence and corruption.
Speaker 6:A lot of corruption. If a judge does block one of your policies part of your agenda, will you abide by that rule?
Speaker 3:Well, I don't abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it. But then what he's done is he's slowed down up the books. You know, if a person's crooked and they get caught, other people see that and all of a sudden it becomes harder later on. So yeah, the answer is I think it's the courts always abide by it and will appeal. But appeals take a long time and I would hope that a judge, if you go into a judge and you show them here's a corrupt situation. We have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. Do you want us not to give it and give it back to the taxpayer? I would hope a judge would say don't send it, give it back to the taxpayer.
Speaker 4:If I can add to that, what we're finding is that a bunch of the fraud is not even going to Americans. So I think we can all agree that if there's going to be fraud, it should at least go to Americans. But a bunch of the fraud rings that are operating in the United States and taking advantage of the federal to 200 million dollars a year.
Speaker 1:Now, I actually think a lot of that last part was actually fairly true. Remember the book that was on our book list a while back, from the general that we got to talk to that wrote the book why we Lost? Talk to? Uh, that wrote the book why we Lost, and this was a book. This was a book by um General Daniel P Bulger and this is, uh, his um gripping insider account of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how it all went wrong.
Speaker 1:And in that book he details a lot of the, the, the fraud, waste and abuse that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, including with some of the contractors who would bill us for bridge building and stuff like that, and then have somebody that they knew would go blow up the bridge right after he got billed and then say it was the Taliban, when it was actually not the Taliban, it was just one of their cousins and it was actually not the Taliban, it was just one of their cousins.
Speaker 1:They talked about how there were people who would sit on recruiting missions and they would say they recruited said number of troops and those people didn't exist and it just be one person pocketing all these paychecks. It talked about it, and they would, of course, have to have vehicles that they were allegedly using for all these troops, and those people didn't exist, so the vehicles actually weren't being used, they were being sold. So there's a lot of fraud, waste and abuse when it comes to especially the Pentagon and foreign policy and, of course, the soft power that was used by USAID, and so I had no problem with that.
Speaker 7:An example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms were sent to Gaza, but after fact-check, this apparently Gaza in Mozambique and the program was to protect them against HIV. So can you correct the statements? It wasn't sent to Hamas. Actually it was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms were sent there.
Speaker 4:And how can we?
Speaker 7:make sure that all the statements that you said were correct, so we can trust what you say.
Speaker 4:Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody can have had a thousand. I mean we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes.
Speaker 1:Now, of course that becomes part of the problem because of course the polling is clear Foreign policy does not poll well with the American public in general. So if you were to have a story that would say $5 million worth of condoms or $50 million worth of condoms went to the Taliban and then somebody else says, well, actually $50 million worth of condoms went to Mozambique, I'm actually not fairly sure if the American public is going to care about where the $50 million went. I think they're going to be more upset that $50 million went, period. Now. And the other part is, of course a lot of people will see the story, the initial story, but not see the correction, and that is going to then become a problem in and of itself. I think I've said before that Diddy lie gets around the world before truth even gets out of bed.
Speaker 4:So you know, I'm not sure we should be sending 15 million bells with the Congress anywhere. Frankly, I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about. That's really a normal number of comments if you think about it. But if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like okay, that's not as bad. But still, why are we doing that, can you?
Speaker 6:talk a little bit about how closely you're working with agency heads as you're making these decisions.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we work closely with agency heads and yeah, so there are sort of checks in place. So it's not just us going in and doing things. We know, it's in partnership with agency heads and I check with the president to make sure that this is what the president wants to have happen. So we talk almost every day and I double-check things to make sure Is this something? Mr President, you want us to do this? Then we'll do it.
Speaker 5:USAID has been one of your main targets. Are you concerned at all that some of the cuts or that shutting that agency altogether may lead to diseases or other bigger problems starting in other countries that then come to the United States? Yeah, so that's an interesting example.
Speaker 4:So that's something where we work closely with the State Department and Secretary Rubio and we have, for example, turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV prevention and for HIV prevention. I love that. Yes, correct, and we are moving fast. So we will make mistakes, but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly.
Speaker 6:Do you think that's a worthy cause?
Speaker 4:USAID. I think that there's some worthy things, but overall, if you say what is the bang for the buck, I would say it was not very good. There was far too much of what USAID was doing was influencing elections in ways that I think were dubious and do not stand for the light of day.
Speaker 1:And, of course, when he's talking about influencing elections, that's the CIA propping up governments, toppling governments around the world, which I do agree has been an awful thing, does that?
Speaker 6:have to follow up to the Pentagon contracts If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the president's directing you to look into the Department of Defense is that a conflict of interest?
Speaker 4:Yes, you're right, I agree with you at the.
Speaker 6:President's request. Does that present a conflict of interest for you? No, because you have to look at the individual contract and say, first of all, I'm not the one filing the contract.
Speaker 1:It's people at SpaceX or someone who will be filing the contract, and I'd like to say, if you see any contract where I thought that was silly, I'm not the one filing the SpaceX are going to be doing things that benefit SpaceX, so it will be benefiting you directly. So of course, it's your company. You should not be involved in the oversight of your own company when it comes to government contracts, and nor should your staff, because, at the end of the day, if your staff benefits, so do you. If you benefit, so do the board of directors. So, in theory, so does everybody else, so do the board of directors, so, in theory, so does everybody else. So there would need to be another Doge executive that would have to have a look at the, at the rid of the scam. I don't think you should be over the government, the part of the government that regulates your specific companies. I think you just run headlong into another corruption problem, because, of course, as we know, as that saying says, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Speaker 4:The contract where it was awarded to SpaceX. That wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer. Let me know, Because every one of them was.
Speaker 5:The President said the other day that you might look at treasuries. Could you explain that a little bit? What kind of fraud? Or that question goes to both of you what kind of fraud are you expecting to see or do you see right now in US treasuries? I think you mean the Treasury Department as opposed to Treasury bills.
Speaker 4:You also referenced tre. Well, as I mentioned earlier, really the first part of this is to make sure we actually collect the story of this. Otherwise I might enjoy this, but it's sticking in my ears. This has been hot in here since I paid. So the stuff we're doing with the Treasury Department is so basic that you can't believe it doesn't exist already. So, for example, like I mentioned, just making sure that when a payment goes out, it has to have the payment categorization code. It's like what type of payment is this? You can't just leave the field blank. Currently, many countries, the field is left blank and you have to describe what's the payment for some basic rationalization. That also is left blank.
Speaker 1:So this is why you know Pentagon when's the last time a Pentagon passed an audit? I mean a decade ago. Maybe it's a great point. It's a great point.
Speaker 4:Ben Nagan has failed a lot of audits, so yeah, and once in a while, the Treasury has to test pause payments if it thinks the payment is going to a fraudulent organization. Like, if a company or organization is on a do-not-pay list, we should not pay it. I'm sure you would agree. Like, if it's quite hard to get on that payment, the do-not-pay list it, but this is someone that is just like dead people, terrorists, known fraudsters, that kind of thing we should not pay them. But currently we do, which is crazy. But currently we do, which is crazy. We should stop that and, by the way, hundreds thousands of transactions like that. You know, we have a big team and, for the sake of the country, I hope that the person that's in charge and the other people that report to me that are charged are allowed to do the right thing daily picture of his honest, legitimate and competent.
Speaker 3:We're looking at just a pretty, but it was a. That was. That's what will get. The military will get education. It was a great race. But the u s, a, I, d is really corrupt. That is correct. It's a competent. That's really corrupt.
Speaker 3:And I can imagine just say, well, maybe corrupt, but you have a regular to look over the country and to, as we say, make America great again. But you don't have the right to go and look and see whether or not things are right, that they're paying, or that things are honest, that they're paying, and nobody can even believe this. Other people, law professors, they've been saying how can you take that person's right away? He's supposed to be running, go to numbers that you're not going to believe and, as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it and the only way to catch it is to look for it. And if a judge is going to say you're not allowed to look for it, that's pretty safe for our country. I don't understand how that even works. Sir, can you personally guarantee that the workers who opt in to resign now will be paid for September? Well, they're getting their money, but they're getting a good deal. They're getting a big buyout and what we're trying to do is reduce government. We have too many people. We have office spaces occupied by 4%. Nobody's showing up to work because they were told not to and then Biden gave them a five the stuff is because of my.
Speaker 3:It's his fault. He allowed this country. What he did on our border, what he did on our border is almost not as bad as what he did with all of these contracts that have come out. It's. It's a very sad day when we look at it. I can't even believe it, but many contracts just extend and they just keep extending and there was nobody there to correct it, and that cannot be. I can't imagine that could be held up by the court Any court that would say that the president or his representatives, like Secretary of the Treasury, secretary of State, whatever doesn't have the right to go over their books and make sure everything's honest. I mean, how can you have a country? You can't have anything that way. You can't have a business that way. You can't have a country that way. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, thank you everybody.
Speaker 6:I'm going to leave you back to that. If you want to come over, we'll be at the White House tonight at about 10 o'clock.
Speaker 3:If you want to come over, you can say hello. Did you guys get anything returned? Not much. No, they were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia. Actually. I hope that's the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed. They've lost millions of people. They've lost, in terms of soldiers, probably 1.5 million soldiers in a short period of time. We've got to stop that war and I'm interested primarily from the standpoint of death. We're losing all those soldiers, and they're not American soldiers, they're Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, but you're probably talking about a million and a half. I think we've got to bring that one to an end.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Let's get a few of these headlines in here. Thank you to a state charge on Tuesday for his role to defraud donors to a non-profit devoted to building a wall on the country's southern border. Now Bannon won't serve time behind bars under the plea agreement which was laid out during a hearing in the New York courtroom on Tuesday. In exchange for pleading guilty to one count of scheming to defraud In the first degree, he received a sentence of a conditional discharge for three years Now. During that time, bannon is forbidden from serving as a director of any non-profit organization and any non-profit in New York, or raise any money for charities with access in the state. Now the plea brings an end to a matter that begun during President Trump's first administration, just as Trump has vowed again to beef up border barriers in the early days of his new presidency. Bannon served as Trump's chief strategist for the first seven months of the Trump presidency in 2017.
Speaker 1:Bannon was charged in September of 2022 for his role in organizing the organization that raised millions for an effort to privately build a wall along the US-Mexican border. He and a group which was called the we Build a Wall were accused of defrauding donors for $15 million in donations. Dobannon's lawyer said Tuesday he didn't personally pocket any of the money. Tuesday he didn't personally pocket any of the money. Now the Trump ally attended the hearing in his usual courtroom attire a brown jacket, untucked black button-down shirt over gray jeans. He was charged with two counts of money laundering in the second degree, two counts of conspiracy in the fourth degree and a scheme to defraud in the first degree and a conspiracy in the fifth degree. Under the plea agreement, bannon entered a guilty plea to just the first scheme to defraud charge. He was all. He also waived his rights to appeal the case. Now manhattan district attorney alvin bragg sent a statement to cbs news. This resolution achieves our primary goal to protect charities in New York from giving to charitable to fraud. New York has an important interest in rooting out fraud in our markets, our corporations and our charities, and we will continue to do so.
Speaker 1:A federal grand jury indicted Bannon in a similar case in August 2020. Now that prosecution came to an abrupt halt when Bannon was pardoned by Trump in the final hours of his first term in office. Trump pardon authority extends to federal matters, meaning he is not able to pardon Bannon in this case, which is in the New York State Court. Now, bannon served four months in federal prison in 2024 after he was found guilty in 2022 for contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to appear before the House Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. He has decried all the cases against him, claiming they were driven by political animus. Now, the charges against him in New York were brought by Bragg, whose office last year obtained the only criminal eviction in American history of a former and future president. In that case, trump was found guilty of felony counts falsifying business records in a matter dating back to his first campaign in 2016. The case, which Trump has appealed, promises to put Bragg and his office at the center of heightened scrutiny, as Trump and his senior justice department leaders vowed to investigate those who investigated him. Now, 36 hours after Russell Vaught took over the Consumer Protection Bureau, he shut its operation.
Speaker 1:Sorry, one of Wall Street's most feared regulators, with the power to issue rules on mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other areas affecting Americans' financial lives. Now, the day before, linda Wetzel closed her retirement home in Southport, north Carolina, in 2012, a cozy place where she could open the windows at night and catch an ocean breeze. The bank making the loan surprise her with fees she hadn't expected. She had scored her mortgage paperwork and couldn't find the charge disclosed anywhere. She had made the payment and then filed an online complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bank quickly opened an investigation with the bureau and a month later it sent her five thousand six hundred dollars check. The first thought was thank you. I was in tears. She recalled that money was a year or two of my savings on my mortgage. It was not much, but it was my little nest egg. Now she she was refunded a tiny piece of the work the bureau had done since it was created in 2011. It is actually called back 21 billion for consumers $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed student loan servicing markets, transformed mortgage lending rules, enforced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims.
Speaker 1:It may no longer be able to carry out that work because President Trump on Friday appointed Russell Vaught, who was confirmed a day earlier, to lead the Office of Management and Budget as the agency's acting director. Vaught was an author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for upending the federal government that called for significant changes, including abolishing the Consumer Protection Bureau. So in less than 36 hours. Vaught threw the agency into chaos. On Saturday he ordered the Bureau's 1,700 employees to stop nearly all their work and announced plans to cut the agency's funding. Then, on Sunday, he closed the Bureau's headquarters for the coming week. Workers who tried to retrieve their laptops from the offices were turned away. Employees said the bureau has been a woke and weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time. Mr Vaught wrote on X on Sunday. This must end Crafted by Congress.
Speaker 1:In the aftermath of the housing crisis that set off the Great Recession, the Consumer Protection Bureau became one of Wall Street's most feared regulators, with the power to issue new rules and penalize companies for breaking them around mortgages, credit card debts, student loans, credit reporting and other areas that affect the financial lives of millions of Americans. The Bureau's actions made it a lightning rod for criticism from the banks and Republican lawmakers that put it squarely in the Trump administration's crosshair. The agency's foes have long called for its elimination, which only Congress has the power to do. Elon Musk, the billionaire leader of the government efficiency teams that has created havoc throughout the federal government, posted cfpb rest in peace on social media on x on friday. A few hours earlier, his associates had gained access to the consumer perception bureau's headquarters and the computer systems. Now the national treasury employees union, which represents the bureau employees, filed a lawsuit against Mr Vaught on Sunday night. Granting must teams access to the employee records violated the Privacy Act of 1974, a law regulating how government handles individuals personal information. The union said it is in a non-compliant which is filed in federal court in Washington. Now agency workers fear their employment data could be used for online harassment or to blackmail, threaten or intimidate them. The complaint, it said Workers are also concerned about the disclosure of the personal health and financial details. The union added. The union filed a second lawsuit the acting director over his efforts to freeze agencies work vaults orders illegally infringe over his efforts to freeze agencies work vaults orders illegally infringe, the union said, of congress's authority to set and fund the missions of the consumer bureau. Representatives of the consumer bureau and the budget office did not respond to requests for comment.
Speaker 1:During the first trump's administration, where republicans control both chambers of congress, lawmakers failed to amass enough votes to abolish the agency. Some have indicated that they would try and would like to try again. Senator Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican who serves on the Senate Banking Committee, called the Bureau, a rogue agency. On Sunday on CBS News program Face the Nation. It has been basically a reckless agency that's been allowed to go way beyond the mandate. I think it was that was originally intended. He said it's time to rein it in.
Speaker 1:Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts who fought for the agency's creation and who describes herself as his mom on X biography, has spent the last decade battling attempts to dismantle the Consumer Protection Bureau. Last decade battling attempts to dismantle the consumer protection bureau, president trump campaigned on helping working families, but russ vought just told wall street that it is open season to scam families, she said on sunday in a written statement. What vought is doing is illegal and dangerous and we will fight back. Many of the agency's actions have directly affected americans pocketbooks. Its rules overhaul the market, curbing the kinds of subprime loans that set off the housing crisis. Pressure from the Bureau led major banks to reduce or eliminate their overdraft fees, and a recently finalized rule would cap the cost of those fees at $5. Those fees at five dollars. The agency's recently adopted rules to eliminate medical debt from credit card reports and limit the most credit card late fees to eight dollars or less per month, but the lawsuits have delayed those rules from taking effect.
Speaker 1:Dissatisfaction created the Consumer Protection Bureau and people's dissatisfaction created Trump, said Shannar Shikari, law professor of the University of California Davis. Trump's team has given priority to attack specific agencies like the US Agency for International Development and the Consumer Bureau that serve vulnerable populations, mr Shikari said, while throwinga lot of federal support and cheering to agencies like Immigration, customs and Enforcement, which has intensified its immigration crackdown. While the bureau cannot be shuttered without congressional action, its direction has the power to radically alter its approach Now, during Trump's first home, he appointed Mick Mulvaney, then a director of the Budget Office. Trump's first home, he appointed Mick Mulvaney, then a director of the budget office, now leads as the Bureau's acting director. Mulvaney called the agency a joke in a sad kind of way and sharply co-tailed its enforcement actions and rulemaking work. The agency's power has swung like a pendulum. It moved aggressively when Democrats held the White House, but pulled back during Trump's first term. Mulvaney and his trump appointed successor, uh, caitlin kringer, put the bureau into a kind of hibernation, gutting rules that would have wiped out much of the payday lending market and slashing the bureau's enforcement actions.
Speaker 1:But several current agencies employees who spoke confidently, uh, for fear of retribution, said votes order on saturday stretched beyond what occurred during the last trump administration. His instructions to cease all supervision and examination activities caused particular alarm. While other federal agencies, including the federal deposit insurance corporation, the federal reserve and office of the Computer and Currency, also oversee banks, the Consumer Bureau is the sole regulator for bank non-lenders. Now those companies hold a large share of the market, coming in at $13 trillion alone when it comes to the mortgage market. Vaught also said he intended to cut off the Consumer Bureau's funding, which comes directly from the Federal Reserve, outside the usual congressional appropriations process. The agency's budget for the 2025 fiscal year calls for around $800 million in annual spending and the Fed transferred $245 million to the Bureau in January to fulfill its latest request. Vaught wrote on X that he had been. He told the Fed that the Bureau would not be taking its next funding draw because it's not reasonable or necessary to carry out its duties.
Speaker 1:Adam Leviathan Levitin, a professor at Georgetown law who specializes in financial regulation, said on Sunday the false orders might be illegal. Some of the federal laws that govern the consumer Bureau order it's to supervise specific entities. That work has had. Work does not appear to be discretionary, he said. Now the acting director has the ability to seriously hobble the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau through a bunch of slow bleeds, but he's trying to skip all the necessary steps and just go for an immediate death blow. He may not have the legal ability to actually do that, but I'm not sure how much that is going to matter.
Speaker 1:A lot of the way Trump administration has been dealing with regulatory agencies is a kind of um blitzkrieg tactic, where a key component is creating fear, uncertainty and chaos. A rally on Saturday outside of the bureau's headquarters, organized by its staff union, drew a few hundred participants. A Maryland resident who asked that her name be withheld for fear of retribution, said Trump's allies attended with her husband, a federal worker whose workers who support the agency and employees. I don't think people understand what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does. She said the administration said they are closing it because of fraud, but the Bureau's literal job is to protect people from fraud and drunk fees and predatory lending. Uh weed soap. The retiree who used her five thousand six hundred dollar refund to replace the floors in her home said the quick action of her uh complaint made her feel empowered. It was such a relief relief to have the government saying what the bank did was wrong. This is not the rule of law, she said.
Speaker 1:I got a question today that actually somewhat coincides with the way I was going to end the show. Kind of perfectly ended it that way. Question from longtime listener and Patreon, gene. Please name the government agencies investigating Elon Musk and why he is a focus. Thank you, mr McClain. So at least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by Musk. Those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations pending complaints enforcement actions into Musk's six companies. Now there was a long, detailed story out of the New York Times that we're going to go over next about this conflict of interest.
Speaker 8:Look, these damn billionaires are making their moves right out in the open. Look at Elon, please. No, just look. He invested $288 million to buy an election for Donald Trump, for Donald Trump, and now he is right here to collect on that investment. Elon Musk owns X, which has been losing money like crazy. So Elon has a plan for a new payment platform called X Money. Elon wants X Money to touch every part of your financial life. But Elon has got a problem the financial cops. The CFPB is there to make sure that Elon's new project can't scam you or steal your sensitive personal data. So Elon's solution Get rid of the cops.
Speaker 2:Kill the CFPB, the CF, thank you. This article is by Eric Lipton and Kirsten Grind and read by an automated voice. President Trump has been in office less than a month and Elon Musk's vast business empire is already benefiting, or is now in a decidedly better position to benefit. No-transcript. Mr Musk has also reaped the benefit of resignations by Biden-era regulators that flipped control of major regulatory agencies, leaving more sympathetic Republican appointees overseeing those lawsuits. At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr Musk's six companies. According to a review by the New York Times, the events of the past few weeks have thrown into question the progress and outcomes of many of those pending investigations into his companies. The inquiries include the Federal Aviation Administration's fines of Mr Musk's rocket company, spacex, for safety violations and a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit pressing Mr Musk to pay the federal government perhaps as much as $150 million, accusing him of having violated federal securities law. On its own, the National Labor Relations Board, an independent watchdog agency for workers' rights, has 24 investigations into Mr Musk's companies. According to the review by the Times, since January, mr Trump has fired three officials at that agency, including a board member, effectively stalling the board's ability to rule on cases. Until Mr Trump nominates new members, cases that need a ruling by the board cannot move forward. According to the agency, over at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a public database shows hundreds of complaints about the electric car company Tesla, mostly concerning debt collection or loan problems. The agency has now effectively been put out of commission, at least temporarily, by the Trump administration, which has ordered its staff to put a hold on all investigations. The Bureau also is an agency that would have regulated Mr Musk's new efforts to bring a payment service to X CFPB rip. Mr Musk wrote in a social media post last week as the Trump administration moved to close down the bureau.
Speaker 2:Mr Musk not only has numerous contracts that are overseen by multiple government agencies, including space, media, financial securities and highway safety. He and his team also have an extraordinary position, created by Mr Trump, that allows him to review the spending and staffing of every department in the executive branch through his cost-cutting initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency. Traditional federal conflict of interest rules seem almost antiquated if Mr Musk is determined to be involved in specific decisions about agencies his companies do business with. That is why Mr Musk's role is so concerning to former White House ethics lawyers in Democratic and Republican administrations alike. None of the investigations or lawsuits involving Mr Musk and his companies, at least so far, have formally been dropped since the start of the new administration, according to more than a dozen current and former federal officials interviewed by the Times. The Times also found no evidence that Mr Musk directly ordered that an investigation into one of his companies be shut down or stalled. The shifts at the agencies in many cases reflect changes in national priorities that come with a president who has long complained that government regulation has been too aggressive, a view widely held in the business community. But the upheaval at federal agencies represents one of the first tests of a wide range of conflicts of interest Mr Musk has brought to the White House, including 100 contracts with 17 federal agencies.
Speaker 2:Mr Musk controls six companies, including Tesla, which is publicly traded. He is the founder of SpaceX, the artificial intelligence startup, xai, the Boring Company, a tunneling venture, and Neuralink, which is developing brain-computer implants. All of those are private. He also owns the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. Mr Musk's company has secured $13 billion in contracts over the past five years, making SpaceX, which collects most of that money, one of the biggest government contractors. There is already talk during the Trump administration of expanding these deals, particularly at the Air Force.
Speaker 2:Mr Musk has had a long and contentious relationship with regulators of his companies. He is called the SEC bastards, and SpaceX has sued the NLRB, arguing it's unconstitutional after the agency had alleged that the company had mistreated and illegally fired some workers. If the rules are such that you can't make progress, then you have to fight the rules, mr Musk said in an authorized biography published in 2015. Democrats in Congress and outside lawyers who specialize in government contracting and ethics have questioned Mr Musk's position, saying that they cannot identify a time in American history when a corporate executive with so many regulatory matters, as well as billions of dollars in federal contracts, has had such power over government operations. Mr Musk's dual roles running a for-profit corporation while serving in public office not only creates glaring conflicts of interest that pose grave risks for America's most sacred institutions, but may also violate federal law. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who is the ranking member of a Senate investigations panel, wrote in a letter to Tesla's general counsel and board chairman this month. Mr Blumenthal sought answers as to how the company is dealing with the apparent conflicts. Mr Trump, speaking with reporters before he attended the Super Bowl on Sunday, said Mr Musk is not gaining anything in the role. White House officials last week added that it is up to Mr Musk to police his own actions. 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. The White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, said Mr Musk, his companies and a spokeswoman for the Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to requests for comment. However, in comments from the Oval Office with Mr Trump on Tuesday, mr Musk defended his involvement in Pentagon contracting and said he was confident he did not have conflicts because employees at SpaceX submit the bids, not him personally. Mr Musk added that if anyone can find a contract that was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer let me know, because every one of them was SpaceX, tesla and Safety.
Speaker 2:Spacex's launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket in July 2023 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida gained little national attention, but in its own way, it was historic. The company was putting a 10-ton satellite the largest ever sent into what is called geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above Earth. To the public, the launch went off without a hitch, but behind the scenes a conflict between SpaceX and the FAA had been playing out. Documents show the agency had told SpaceX as the countdown to the launch was underway that a new facility SpaceX had built to fill the rocket engines with fuel had not yet passed all the required safety checks. Spacex went ahead anyway. The FAA proposed a $283,009 fine. That move, along with a second proposed fine from the FAA, infuriated Mr Musk, who had called the enforcement action unjustified and improper politically motivated behavior. Mr Musk later demanded the resignation of the agency's head, michael G Whitaker. Mr Musk got his wish when Mr Whitaker, a lawyer with decades of experience in the aviation industry, resigned on the last day of the Biden administration, even though he had been unanimously confirmed only in late 2023 to a five-year term with bipartisan support in the Senate.
Speaker 2:With Mr Trump back in the White House, mr Musk's allies saw an opening to revoke the proposed FAA fines and also to force the agency, which is charged under law with ensuring that rocket launches do not endanger the public or cause undue harm to the environment, to speed up its SpaceX approvals. The confirmation hearing last month of Sean Duffy for Transportation Secretary, created a moment to ask for the fine to be withdrawn. If confirmed, will you commit to reviewing these penalties and, more broadly, to curtailing bureaucratic overreach and accelerating launch approvals at FAA's Commercial Space Office? As Senator Ted Cruz, republican of Texas, where SpaceX is moving its headquarters, mr Duffy, who has since been confirmed, replied I commit to doing a review and working with you and following up on the space launches and what's been happening at the FAA. With regard to the launches, katie Thompson, who recently left the agency, where she served as deputy administrator and previously chief of staff, said she found Mr Musk's involvement as a federal government official very troubling, given what she called Mr Musk's clear conflicts of interest. The FAA's actions are supposed to be driven by safety, she said.
Speaker 2:Officials at the FAA's Commercial Space Division, which directly regulates SpaceX launches, said in a statement to the Times that it had not seen any recent cuts in its staff of approximately 160, and that the standards it uses to evaluate SpaceX permit requests had not changed. Even seemingly small staff changes could benefit Mr Musk's multi-billion dollar business operations. The full-time fish and amp wildlife agency Wildlife Biologist assigned to help monitor the federal lands near the SpaceX launch site for any damage to threatened species habitats after launches recently was transferred to a post elsewhere in Texas. The service is currently covering the workload with existing staff, the agency said when asked about the transfer by the Times, this response was derided by local environmentalists who said that they have relied on the agency to help protect nearby coastal estuaries, considered some of the most important bird habitats in the world. What is happening is more or less a capitulation. They are tiptoeing around because of Trump and Musk, said Jim Chapman. Leader of a South Texas community group, called Save RGV short for Rio Grande Valley Shifts at the SEC and FEC.
Speaker 2:Changes in leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which sued Mr Musk in January shortly before Mr Trump returned to the White House, will almost certainly result in an outcome more beneficial for Mr Musk. Lawyers involved in the case said the SEC determined that Mr Musk underpaid by at least $150 million for the Twitter stock he purchased in 2022 before moving to formally take over the company, because he illegally failed to file a disclosure on time that he had already purchased 5% of the company. If that notice had been filed, the stock would almost certainly have risen in value and cost him more to acquire. The agency said Mr Musk called the agency a totally broken organization. In response toa post on X regarding the SEC's lawsuit, mr Musk for months repeatedly rebuffed efforts by agency investigators to interview him, agreeing only a few months before the end of the Biden administration to answer questions in person, delaying the investigation. The agency is overseen by a five-member commission which must sign off on litigation and settlements. The two Republicans objected to the planned lawsuit, but they were in the minority at the time. Now, with the departures of two Democrats, republicans have a majority and two lawyers who have participated in the deliberations said they expect that the matter will be settled with a modest fine. Mr Trump's effort last week to remove the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission also could affect Mr Musk. The agency has received several complaints involving Mr Musk, including one from Public Citizen, a nonprofit group, saying that he violated federal law by offering voters in swing states $1 million each to encourage voter registration. Challenged Mr Trump's effort to remove her. If her seat were empty, it would be less likely that the four remaining members of the commission would agree to open any new investigation or approve settlements, said Daniel Weiner, a former lawyer at the agency, as any such move requires four votes.
Speaker 2:Workers' Rights At two federal watchdog agencies for workers. The actions by Mr Trump have a clear effect on Mr Musk's business empire, as well as countless other companies that have matters before them. The firings at the agencies the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission mean neither has a quorum on its board to decide cases. One of the many NLRB investigations involves Mr Musk's company's sweeping job cuts in 2022 at his social media platform. X then called Twitter. Twitter employees at the time banded together to talk about what was going on at work on Slack software and on the messaging app Signal. Twitter tried to get a hold of the communications and even surveilled some employees. According to copies of the NLRB charges obtained through public records requests, the matter is being reviewed by NLRB staff, but the board's current construct could trouble its path forward or prevent a decision against X from being enforced. Even if Mr Trump replaces the absent board member, that would be likely to significantly shift the balance of the board more Republican. According to four people familiar with the agency, shannon Liss Reardon, a lawyer representing the Twitter workers, said she is worried that the changes at the NLRB could affect those specific charges. If I were a betting person. This is not exactly where I'm hanging my hat today. She said In 2023,.
Speaker 2:The EEOC separately sued Tesla alleging widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees and retaliation. The litigation has been a thorn in Tesla's side. Last year, a judge ruled against the company's move to dismiss the lawsuit, despite the company's argument that Black workers can and do thrive at Tesla. While the case is moving forward, mr Trump is expected to appoint new commissioners representing a shift in the agency's approach to workers' rights and a potential dismissal of the matter. A spokesman for the EEOC said the agency would not comment on current litigation.
Speaker 2:Fired watchdogs In his first week, mr Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general who are charged with investigating waste and corruption within their own agencies. The mass firing, a move that may have violated federal law, may benefit Mr Musk. Among the dismissed inspectors general was Phyllis Fong at the Agriculture Department. Her agency had opened an investigation in 2022 into Mr Musk's brain implant startup, neuralink, and the inquiry was in progress as of late last year, according to two people familiar with it. Reuters reported last month that the investigation was continuing. Reuters reported last month that the investigation was continuing.
Speaker 2:In December, mr Musk posted a letter from his lawyer on X that claimed that the SEC had also reopened an investigation into Neuralink.
Speaker 2:Both investigations arose after a nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine discovered through a public records lawsuit in 2021 that Neuralink had allegedly mistreated dozens of test monkeys. Ryan Merkley, the nonprofit's director of research advocacy, said in an interview they suffered from infections, internal bleeding and there were surgical mistakes that were made where devices that were screwed to the skull came loose. Mr Merkley said Mr Musk has denied the mistreatment of monkeys at Neuralink and the company was not cited after a USDA review. The USDA inspector general's office didn't return requests for comment. On Monday, mr Trump fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency. The office had pending requests to investigate Mr Musk based on allegations raised by Democrats in Congress last week that Mr Musk's role as a federal government official creates an unavoidable conflict of interest. The letter, signed by 12 House Democrats, said the American people deserve assurances that no individual, regardless of stature, is permitted to influence policy for personal gain. Jessica Silver Greenberg and Aaron Crowley contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.