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In addition to being dubious and overzealous (to put it lightly) Elon Musk’s recent political maneuvers as the co-leader of DOGE have been deemed illegal, according to experts.
In case you missed it, Musk has, over the past few weeks, leveraged his cost-cutting DOGE taskforce to overextend his reach within key federal agencies including the Departments of Education and Labor, the foreign aid agency USAID, and the US Treasury. While all these attacks have been swiftly rebuked — in the form of protests, lawsuits, and public condemnations from Democrats — it seemed for a while that Musk was evading the law, at least until now. Of particular concern among legal experts is Musk’s infiltration of USAID.
Earlier this week, the foreign aid and humanitarian agency announced that it was set to place almost all of its direct-hire workforce on administrative leave, just one day after Musk said on X that he was intent on “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” For extra measure, the billionaire — whose wealth could go towards the very same efforts as USAID’s — falsely claimed that the agency is a “criminal organization” that “needs to die.” But, according to Harvard Law school professor Laurence Tribe, it’s Musk who is the criminal.
“Elon Musk’s claim that he has President Trump’s go-ahead to shut down USAID is flatly illegal and unconstitutional,” Tribe told Business Insider. Further arguing the point, Tribe reiterated that “only Congress wields the power” to create or dismantle entire federal agencies, meaning that neither Musk, nor President Trump, have the authority to shut down USAID. “The president cannot do this directly and so he can’t delegate any authority to do it to Musk or anyone else,” echoed Cornell Law School professor, Michael Dorf.
Since only Congress has the power to “unilaterally shutter” USAID, Dorf said Musk and Trump’s efforts to do so are “blatantly unlawful and a violation of Trump’s oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.” Dorf and Tribe aren’t the only experts who are warning that the law will soon catch up to Musk. Speaking more broadly of the billionaire’s government purging efforts as part of DOGE, Georgetown Law School professor David Super told The Washington Post described Musk’s activities as “wildly illegal.”
“[Musk seems] to be playing a quantity game, and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once,” Super said. In another interview with Vox, Super cited Musk’s elevated status as a special government employee and his access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems as other key areas of legal concern. Beyond legal experts, the lawlessness of Musk’s activity has also been called out by politicians. In response to the billionaire’s antics, Congresswoman Betty McCollum released a press statement condemning Trump for “illegally [granting] access to sensitive government information.”
“Trump has allowed him to illegally raid the United States government, seemingly for his own gain,” McCollum added. “We cannot allow an unelected billionaire to illegally take over key government functions by force.” It seems like just yesterday we were rightfully up in arms about Musk’s terrifying familiar hand gesture at the inauguration. Now, he’s using those hands to illegally chip away at critical agencies that impact millions. Can we go back to the days when the biggest grievance we had with Musk was his Twitter-to-X rebrand? Better yet, let’s go back to when he wasn’t even in the headlines at all.