WASHINGTON – Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and an avid supporter of Donald Trump, was plunged into new controversy on Friday after a report that he’s in common contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Wall Road Journal story, which has been denied by the Kremlin, comes days after the US Justice Division despatched a letter to Musk’s America PAC warning that its $1 million giveaways to registered voters could violate federal legislation.
Musk, 53, the chief government of SpaceX and Tesla and the proprietor of X, previously Twitter, has thrown his thousands and thousands, time and appreciable affect into sending the previous Republican president again to the White Home since endorsing him in July.
Musk has reportedly donated $118 million to his private pro-Trump political motion committee, a company which collects funds for elections.
He’s additionally appeared on stage with Trump at a marketing campaign rally in Pennsylvania and hosted a sequence of city halls on his personal within the battleground state seen as essential within the November election.
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Musk, who supported Barack Obama however has turn out to be more and more conservative lately, peppers his 202 million followers on X every day with messages championing Trump and denigrating his opponent, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Lots of the X posts by the South African-born billionaire decry the variety of migrants crossing into the USA from Mexico or echo discredited conspiracy theories.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has accused Musk of spending thousands and thousands to assist Trump “purchase an election” and jokingly advised that the billionaire — not J.D. Vance — is Trump’s actual operating mate.
Trump has pledged if he wins the election to faucet Musk to go a “authorities effectivity fee” tasked with slashing paperwork and waste.
Musk already holds a prime secret clearance due to SpaceX, which launches rockets for NASA and the Pentagon, and the Wall Road Journal mentioned his contacts with Putin have raised “potential nationwide safety issues” amongst some members of the Biden administration though there isn’t a proof of any “doable safety breaches.”
NASA administrator Invoice Nelson mentioned Friday the report “needs to be investigated.”
“If the story is true that there have been a number of conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then I feel that might be regarding, notably for NASA and the Division of Protection and for a few of the intelligence companies,” Nelson mentioned at an occasion hosted by on-line information outlet Semafor.
‘One contact’
The Journal mentioned the Musk-Putin conversations touched on “private matters, enterprise and geopolitical tensions,” though at one level the Russian chief requested the US billionaire to keep away from activating his Starlink satellite tv for pc web service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese language President Xi Jinping.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the report, saying “it’s all unfaithful, completely false data.”
Putin had one contact with Musk earlier than 2022, Peskov mentioned, once they spoke on the telephone.
“It was a fact-finding dialog,” he mentioned. “They talked about extra visionary know-how, about know-how for the long run.”
SpaceX’s Starlink has been a significant communications device for Ukrainian forces battling Russian troops and Musk “categorically” denied earlier this yr that any terminals had been offered to Russia.
“My firms have in all probability completed extra to undermine Russia than something,” Musk mentioned throughout a streamed occasion on X.
SpaceX has taken away two-thirds of Russia’s area launch enterprise and “Starlink has overwhelmingly helped Ukraine,” he mentioned.
Whereas Musk’s alleged conversations with Putin are drawing scrutiny, so are his every day $1 million giveaways to registered voters — from the Justice Division and election watchdog teams.
Federal legislation prohibits paying individuals to register to vote and the division’s public integrity unit reportedly warned Musk’s America PAC in a letter this week that the sweepstakes could also be unlawful.
Adav Noti, government director of the nonpartisan Marketing campaign Authorized Heart, denounced the giveaways as “egregious.”
“This can be very problematic that the world’s richest man can throw his cash round in an try and immediately affect the result of this election,” Noti mentioned. “This isn’t how our democracy ought to work.”