Senators Reed, Shaheen want Musk Russia contact probe
Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees send a letter (link) to Attorney General Garland and Defence Department Inspector General Storch asking for a proble into Musk’s contact with Russian officials.
We write with serious concern regarding open source reporting detailing conversations between Russian officials and the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk. On October 25, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Musk had multiple, high level conversations with Russian President Vladmir Putin as early as 2022, and sustained contact with high-level Russian officials, including Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko.1 At the same time, Mr. Musk asserts that he holds a Top Secret level security clearance. These relationships between a well-known U.S. adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder. We urgently call upon the U.S. government to open an investigation up to and including a determination by the senior debarment official of the Department of Defense, consistent with section 4654 of title 10 United States Code, to determine whether this behavior should force a review of Mr. Musk’s continued involvement in SpaceX’s varying contracts with the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.
Over a series of posts Musk reacts:
I’m going to find out who’s making these accusations and nuke them. [Shaheen and Reed] are just the puppets. Who actually wrote this and made those knuckleheads sign it?
I’m going to find out who’s making these accusations and nuke them
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2024