MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Members of Elon Musk's DOGE team are continuing their march through government agencies on what they say is a mission to find fraud and wasteful spending. Musk himself is often seen at President Trump's side, who praises him frequently.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And Elon Musk has done an amazing job. I have to tell you, his - him and his super geniuses, you know? These are seriously high-IQ people.
MARTIN: Musk is classified as a special government employee. That's a role created by Congress in the 1960s that allows parts of the federal government to bring someone on for a specific role on a temporary basis. He is also a tech billionaire. And as NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports, the line between those roles is blurry.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROB SCHMITT: We've got one more surprise, in case this wasn't enough. I'm going to let Elon do it.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Elon Musk was a surprise guest at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington, D.C., yesterday. And as part of his introduction, the president of Argentina walked out on stage to give him a red and chrome chainsaw.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ELON MUSK: President Milei has a gift for me.
KEITH: Musk waived it excitedly.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MUSK: This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. Chainsaw.
KEITH: Taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy is what Musk claims to be doing with his project known as the Department of Government Efficiency. But last week, when he met with Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, it wasn't initially clear whether he was there as a member of the Trump administration or as the CEO of Tesla, which is looking to expand in India.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GAURAV SAWANT: Breaking news coming in. You're getting a reaction from Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his meeting with Elon Musk. He's taken to social media platform X to say it was a delight to meet Elon Musk's family...
KEITH: Presenters on India Today speculated about whether they had discussed Tesla or DOGE. A White House official says Musk met with Modi in his personal capacity. Later, though, he was in the Oval Office for Trump's meeting with Modi. In frequent posts on his social media site X, Musk pingpongs between talking about his work slashing government and promoting his business ventures, many of which have government contracts or are regulated by federal agencies. But Trump and Musk dismissed concerns about possible conflicts of interest in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MUSK: I mean, I haven't asked the president for anything ever.
TRUMP: It's true.
SEAN HANNITY: And if it comes up, how will you handle it?
MUSK: Well, if something...
TRUMP: He won't be involved.
MUSK: Yeah.
HANNITY: He won't.
MUSK: I'll recuse myself if it is a conflict.
TRUMP: If there's a conflict, he won't be involved.
MUSK: Yeah.
TRUMP: I mean, I wouldn't want that, and he won't want it.
KEITH: That did not assuage the concerns of Don Fox. He was the top lawyer at the Office of Government Ethics during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.
DON FOX: Musk seems to be in a position with the White House's consent that he can just change hats by the hour as it suits him.
KEITH: The White House says Musk will file a confidential disclosure of his financial interests with the Office of Government Ethics by the end of next month and has been briefed on ethics requirements. As a special government employee - a temporary role - he doesn't have to divest from his businesses, but he is supposed to recuse himself when necessary. Fox says there's little indication the normal process to avoid conflicts is being followed.
FOX: The thing that the public should be concerned about is, well, we don't know. Is he looking after our interests as taxpayers and citizens, or is he looking after his own business interests?
KEITH: These questions about Musk come up as Trump just fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, along with other watchdogs. Richard Briffault specializes in government ethics at Columbia Law School and describes Musk as basically a walking conflict of interest.
RICHARD BRIFFAULT: Whatever the guardrails - and I guess that phrase, guardrails, is being used a lot - but whatever the guardrails are there in terms of preventing public officials from engaging in self-dealing, enforcement seems to be gone.
KEITH: A White House official not authorized to speak about this publicly dismissed the criticisms as partisan, saying there is no concern in the White House about whether Musk will follow strict ethics rules.
Tamara Keith, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
