Elon Musk has signaled to President Trump’s advisers in recent days that he wants to put $100 million into groups controlled by the Trump political operation, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
It is unheard-of for a White House staffer, even one with part-time status, to make such large political contributions to support the agenda of the boss. But there has never been someone in the direct employ of an administration like Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, who is leading Mr. Trump’s aggressive effort to shrink the federal government, the Department of Government Efficiency.
Over the weekend, Mr. Musk traveled to and from Florida aboard Air Force One with Mr. Trump, and posted on his social media website, X, that he had dinner with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday night after some tense interactions earlier in the week.
And on Tuesday, as Mr. Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, faced some violent protests around the globe, Mr. Trump made a display of having five Teslas brought to the White House grounds in a demonstration for the news media, and checked out the cars with Mr. Musk by his side. It was an extraordinary promotion of a company by the most powerful person in the federal government.
“I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people,” Mr. Trump told reporters, referring to Mr. Musk. “And I just want people to know that he can’t be penalized for being a patriot.”
Mr. Musk and White House officials didn’t return a request for comment.
Associates of both Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have talked in recent days about Mr. Musk’s planned donation to a Trump-controlled entity. Mr. Musk has signaled he wants to make the donations not to his own super PAC, which is called America PAC and has spent heavily on Mr. Trump in the past, but to an outside entity affiliated with the president.
The groups that are leading Mr. Trump’s outside activities include Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC, and Securing American Greatness, a political nonprofit. It is not clear if the money would go to those groups or to a new entity the Trump team could create.
Both MAGA Inc. and Securing American Greatness were founded by close allies of Mr. Trump, and have a diverse set of major donors aligned with the president.
Category Archives: conflict of interest laws
“People Are Paying Millions to Dine With Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago”
Guests are paying millions of dollars to dine and meet with President Donald Trump at special events held at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Business leaders can secure a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago for $5 million, according to sources with direct knowledge of the meetings. At a so-called candlelight dinner held as recently as this past Saturday, prospective Mar-a-Lago guests were asked to spend $1 million to reserve a seat, according to an invitation obtained by WIRED.
“You are invited to a candlelight dinner featuring special guest President Donald J. Trump,” the invitation reads, under a “MAGA INC.” header. MAGA Inc., or Make America Great Again Inc., is a super PAC that supported Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. “Additional details provided upon RSVP. RSVPs will be accommodated on a first come, first serve basis. Space is very limited. $1,000,000 per person.”
Invitees were asked to RSVP to Meredith O’Rourke, who served as national finance director and senior adviser at Donald J. Trump for President 2024, a campaign committee, and who is the owner of The O’Rourke Group, which O’Rourke describes on her LinkedIn page as a “Republican political fundraiser.” Invitees were also directed to email Abby Mathis, the finance coordinator at MAGA Inc. Mathis was previously a staff assistant for Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama—a former Auburn University football coach—and also served as an intern at the White House office of the staff secretary, according to LegiStorm, a research organization that posts information on politicians and their staffers….
“It’s everyone else who missed the boat,” a Trumpworld source with knowledge of the meetings says, referring to latecomers to the Trump agenda. The source pointed specifically to the tech sector, where executives have scrambled to show fealty to the new administration. While X owner Elon Musk notably spent at least $260 million to elect Trump, other tech companies and executives collectively donated millions to Trump’s inauguration fund: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos, Meta, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Uber, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman all donated $1 million each.
The $5 million one-on-one meetings have become a “hot ticket” in the business community, says a source familiar with them.
It’s unclear where the money is going and what it will be used for, but one source with direct knowledge of the dinners said “it’s all going to the library,” as in the presidential library that will ostensibly be built once Trump leaves office. MAGA Inc spent over $450 million to elect Trump in 2024, though Trump is not legally permitted to run for a third presidential term in 2028….
“Donald Trump Still Hasn’t Disclosed His Secret Transition Funders”
Donald Trump still hasn’t disclosed private transition donors, missing a deadline that every other president, including Trump himself in 2016, has met for decades.
When Trump’s campaign decided to run a fully privately funded presidential transition, it also jumped through a legal loophole that would have required disclosure by Feb. 19 and a $5,000 contribution limit.
In November, Trump’s now-chief of staff, Susie Wiles, promised to voluntarily make the donors public. But Trump still hasn’t done so, and the White House hasn’t provided a timeline for when he will.
Wiles committed to disclosing the donors two days after The New York Times reported about Trump’s unprecedented break with tradition in rejecting public transition funds and services, and running entirely on private donations.
“Uncovering Conflicts of Interest and Self-Dealing in the Executive Branch”
New from the Brennan Center:
rump’s reelection and the start of his second term have also been notable for how extensively he leaned on ultra-wealthy donors to fund his campaign and staff his administration. Money has always played a role in American politics, but this moment is different. No winning presidential campaign has relied as much on such a small group of donors as the Trump campaign did in 2024 — a strategy made possible by Citizens United and subsequent Supreme Court decisions that dismantled key federal campaign finance regulations. Many of Trump’s biggest supporters were unusually vocal about their support and the outcomes they wanted to see over the next four years. And Trump has pulled them closer since the election, placing them at the center of his secretive transition and giving some of them big roles in the administration.
While winning candidates often reward supporters with ambassadorships or other administration jobs, Trump has given some of his biggest donors key positions with extraordinary potential to influence decisions impacting their own bottom lines. Chief among them is Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and the biggest pro-Trump spender in the 2024 election. Despite Musk’s contracts with the federal government worth billions of dollars, the White House says he will decide for himself whether any conflicts of interest arise in his role as a “special government employee” leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on a slash-and-burn campaign across federal agencies and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending.
Musk and Trump’s other Cabinet nominees and White House appointees make up the wealthiest administration in history — including more than a dozen reported billionaires — with an abnormally long list of potential conflicts of interest. And while appointees (though not the president himself) are required to take some steps to avoid clear conflicts, these requirements are relatively easy to evade. So far Trump has also failed to require his political appointees to take an additional ethics pledge, breaking with the long-standing tradition President John F. Kennedy set in 1961.
The concentration of private wealth and political power in so few hands with so few guardrails could pave the way for Trump’s campaign backers and allies to reap massive financial benefits on a scale not seen since the Gilded Age. Many of the big-ticket policies the administration is set to tackle — including government contracts, tariffs, and regulatory decisions — can be precisely tailored to reward (or punish) specific recipients. And Trump’s refusal to step away from his own extensive business entanglements while in office means he could exercise government power to line his own pockets in addition to his political allies’. This comes alongside the administration’s aggressive steps to limit the government’s ability to fight public corruption….
“How the Trumps Turned an Election Victory Into a Cash Bonanza”
When Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos dined with Donald Trump and his wife Melania at Mar-a-Lago in December, there was a lot at stake for both men: Bezos, a titan of industry whose company is crucial to the U.S. economy, was rebuilding his relationship with a resurgent and powerful soon-to-be president.
A lot was at stake for Melania, too: She was looking for a buyer for a documentary about her transition back to first lady. Her agent had pitched the film, which she would executive produce, to a number of studios, including the one owned by Amazon.
As the meeting approached, Melania consulted with director Brett Ratner on how to sell her idea to the world’s third-richest man. Melania regaled Bezos and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, with the project’s details at dinner.
Just over two weeks later, Amazon, a company that prides itself on frugality and sharp negotiating, agreed to pay $40 million to license the film—the most Amazon had ever spent on a documentary and nearly three times the next-closest offer.
Netflix and Apple declined even to bid. Paramount made a lowball $4 million distribution-rights offer. Disney, the most interested studio besides Amazon, offered $14 million.
“We licensed the upcoming Melania Trump documentary film and series for one reason and one reason only—because we think customers are going to love it,” said an Amazon spokesman.
The first lady’s cut is more than 70% of the $40 million, according to people familiar with the matter. And they’re still looking for more: Melania’s agent has been trying to sell “sponsorships” for the film—starting at $10 million—to prominent CEOs and billionaires who were at the inauguration, according to people familiar with the matter. Buyers would get thanked at the end of the credits and be invited to the premiere. These overtures were made independently of the deal with Amazon, which was unaware of the outreach, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Amazon deal is just one of the ways the new first family has benefited from its return to the White House. Companies have directed about $80 million to members of the Trump family and the Trump presidential library so far, as defendants settle lawsuits the president previously filed against them and corporations enter into new business ventures, including the documentary. This figure doesn’t include potential gains from crypto pursuits.
Much of the legal settlement money will go to a fund for the president’s library, a not-for-profit whose mission is to “preserve and steward” Trump’s legacy. But Trump’s share of a $10 million settlement Elon Musk’s X agreed to this week is expected to go to him directly, according to people familiar with the matter.
“‘The gloves are off’: Trump appears poised to cash in from his presidency in new ways”
Fredreka Schouten for CNN:
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump released meme coins just days before he took the oath of office. A splashy pre-inaugural party was held at a property his company owns. And a Saudi-backed golf tournament is headed to a Trump club this spring.
Trump’s latest money-making moves are raising alarms among ethics watchdogs who say that, just days into his presidency, the Republican appears poised to benefit financially from his final term in office in new and lucrative ways.
During his first four years in office, Trump’s team paid “lip service” to ethics guardrails, said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the liberal group Public Citizen, which this week sued the Trump administration over a separate issue – claiming that Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is operating in violation of a federal transparency law that governs advisory panels….
“Trump Inauguration, Awash in Cash, Runs Out of Perks for Big Donors”
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee is no longer selling tickets for major donors to attend his swearing-in and accompanying private events in Washington, according to five people briefed on the conversations.
The committee has raised over $170 million, according to the people, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to share internal financial information. The haul is so big that some seven-figure donors have been placed on wait lists or have been told they probably will not receive V.I.P. tickets at all because the events are at capacity.
Mr. Trump often talks privately about who has supported him, and the frenzy to donate to his inauguration — even if it comes without the usual exclusive access — underscores the degree to which deep-pocketed donors and corporations are seeking to curry favor with him. Far more than in early 2017 at the start of his first term, corporate America has largely embraced Mr. Trump during his transition, partly out of a desire to get on his good side.
Prospective donors began to be told early this week that no more seats were available for certain events around Washington, according to the people briefed on the conversations. The personalized donation link that fund-raisers had circulated to their networks of major contributors no longer worked on Tuesday and Wednesday. The packages offered to corporate and individual donors had originally been marketed as available through Friday, but they ended early given the extraordinary demand….
“How a Phone Call Drew Alito Into a Trump Loyalty Squabble”
The circumstances were extraordinary for another reason: Justice Alito was being drawn into a highly personalized effort by some Trump aides to blackball Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump from entering the administration, according to six people with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
The phone call centered on William Levi, a former law clerk of Justice Alito’s who seemingly has impeccable conservative legal credentials. But in the eyes of the Trump team, Mr. Levi has a black mark against his name. In the first Trump administration, he served as the chief of staff to Attorney General William P. Barr, who is now viewed as a “traitor” by Mr. Trump for refusing to go along with his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Mr. Levi has been under consideration for several jobs in the new administration, including Pentagon general counsel. He has also been working for the Trump transition on issues related to the Justice Department. But his bid for a permanent position has been stymied by Mr. Trump’s advisers who are vetting personnel for loyalty, according to three of the people with knowledge of the situation.
As Mr. Trump puts together his second administration, Mr. Barr is among a handful of prominent Republicans who are viewed with such suspicion that others associated with them are presumptively not to be given jobs in the administration, according to people familiar with the dynamic. Republicans in that category include Mr. Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and his former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. To be called a “Pompeo guy” or a “Haley person” is considered a kiss of death in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. Resistance to such people can usually be overcome only if Mr. Trump himself signs off on their hiring.
Tuesday’s phone call took place against that backdrop. Several people close to the Trump transition team on Thursday said their understanding was that Justice Alito had requested the call. But a statement from Justice Alito framed the matter as the justice passively agreeing to take a call at the behest of his former clerk.
Mr. Levi did not respond to a request for comment. The Supreme Court press office said it had nothing to add to the statement it put out from Justice Alito on Wednesday. In that statement, Justice Alito said that Mr. Levi “asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position. I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon.”…
Bob Bauer: “Trump is Poised to Turn the DOJ into His Personal Law Firm”
Bob Bauer in The Atlantic:
No president has ever attempted to do what Donald Trump now proposes to do—assemble a small team of former personal attorneys and install it at the highest levels of the Department of Justice. The president-elect first named lawyers who have represented him in recent years to the key positions of deputy attorney general, principal deputy attorney general, and solicitor general. Then, with the quick death of the Matt Gaetz nomination, he announced a new attorney-general nominee, Pam Bondi, who was a member of his legal defense team in the first impeachment. The Justice Department’s responsibilities have always been subject to competing expectations: that it would keep politics out of law enforcement but, like other departments, would loyally serve the president in the implementation of his governing program. The results have been uneven, and at times disastrous, as with Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. But when problems arose, they were relatively localized: the product of poor appointments, or the failure of particular presidents in particular situations to respect institutional values and norms. What the DOJ faces now is different in kind: a vision of White House control achieved through the appointments of individuals the president has chosen because they have worked for him and demonstrated their loyalty. The pressing question now is whether these lawyers may be, as the president-elect likely hopes, the “president’s lawyers” in more than one sense.
“Justice Thomas Did Not Disclose Additional Trips, Democrats Say”
Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose two additional trips from a billionaire patron than have previously come to light, Senate Democrats revealed on Saturday after conducting a 20-month investigation into ethics practices at the Supreme Court.
The findings were part of a 93-page report released by Democratic staff members of the Judiciary Committee along with about 800 pages of documents. It said the two trips, both of which had been previously unknown to the public, took place in 2021 and were provided by Harlan Crow, a real estate magnate in Texas and a frequent patron of Justice Thomas’s.
One trip took place that July by private jet from Nebraska to Saranac, N.Y., where Justice Thomas stayed at Mr. Crow’s upstate retreat for five days. The other came in October, when Mr. Crow hosted Justice Thomas overnight in New York on his yacht after flying him from the District of Columbia to New Jersey for the dedication of a statue.
The disclosures were one of the few new revelations in a report that otherwise largely summarized information about largess accepted by justices — and failures to disclose it — that had already become public. Justice Thomas had not disclosed the trips, even after refiling some of his past financial forms, and the committee learned about them through a subpoena to Mr. Crow, the report said.
“Trump Holds Up Transition Process Over Ethics Code”
President-elect Donald J. Trump has not yet submitted a legally required ethics pledge stating that he will avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical concerns while in office, raising concerns that his refusal to do so will hamper the smooth transition to power.
Mr. Trump’s transition team was required to submit the ethics plan by Oct. 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act.
While the transition team’s leadership has privately drafted an ethics code and a conflict-of-interest statement governing its staff, those documents do not include language, required under the law, that explains how Mr. Trump himself will address conflicts of interest during his presidency.
Since Mr. Trump created his transition team in August, it has refused to participate in the normal handoff process, which typically begins months before the election.
It has missed multiple deadlines for signing required agreements governing the process. That has prevented Mr. Trump’s transition team from participating in national security briefings or gaining access to federal agencies to begin the complicated work of preparing to take control of the government on Jan. 20, 2025….
ELB Book Corner: Bob Bauer: “The Impeachment Process in an Era of Polarization and Expanded Presidential Immunity”
I’m pleased to welcome Bob Bauer to the ELB Book Corner, writing about his new book, The Unraveling. Here is the third of three guest posts:
In a chapter about impeachment in The Unraveling, I single out the late Kenneth Starr for criticism of his performance as independent counsel in the Clinton case. He took on a constitutional controversy laden with unusual elements of run-away partisanship—an impeachment directed at a president’s conduct of his personal life— and made it, on that score, far worse. The chapter detailed the ways in which Starr failed to exercise the particular ethical responsibilities of a lawyers in an exquisitely sensitive public role.
But my larger concern is the well noted increase in partisan appetite for impeachments when a loss at the polls is unthinkable.Those concerned about this trend may have all the more cause for worry now that the Supreme Court has established significant levels of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Even before that decision, immunity figured into the pressures for impeachment: Because presidents could claim immunity from prosecution while office, impeachment was the only source of formal accountability in that period. With the zone of immunity now expanded, advocates for an impeachment can dismiss the suggestion that Congress should stay its hand, respecting the voters’ choice and leaving the president to answer to the legal system after his or her term ends. The President may now get a pass for a wide range of alleged misconduct, and, of course, Congress must impeach and convict before considering a vote on disqualification from holding future office.
For this reason, I make the case that the House and Senate should formally revise the rules governing impeachment processes. While there are some standing rules and often-cited standards, these are largely made up on the fly in each individual case of impeachment. This is a mistake, as it only encourages the engineering of different processes with the actual or perceived purpose of enhancing the prospect of one result or the other. A bipartisan institutional reform exercise while there is no particular impeachment pending could focus attention on what an impeachment process most appropriately should be– with no president at imminent risk of risk benefitting or suffering from the particular choices made.
Among the issues that could be addressed: Is the Senate obligated to hold the trial if the House impeaches? Must it at least consider a Motion to Dismiss—or can it just ignore the House action? On what schedule must the House transmit articles of impeachment? What are precisely the “due process“rights of a president defending against an impeachment in a House or a Senate trial? None of these questions need to be answered so definitively that every conceivable procedural issue is settled before a particular impeachment. There is, however, a major advantage, in substance and credibility, to a “veil of ignorance” establishment of clear rules.
In the book, I note the motion to dismiss filed by the late Senator Robert Byrd to end Senate consideration of the Clinton impeachment. The constitutional remedy of impeachment had deteriorated into spectacle, including “hallway press conferences and [a] battle of press releases that are contributing to the division of our parties and our nation.” As a well-respected institutionalist, Byrd rightly warned that the impeachment process was inflicting more damage on the democracy than the conduct for which President Clinton was impeached.
The House and Senate could collaborate on bipartisan internal reforms to address these dangers of an impeachment process unconstrained by settled standards and processes, overly vulnerable to the worst partisan opportunism. Action may be unlikely, but the cost of inaction is no less predictable.
“NC Justice Berger won’t be recused from major cases involving his father, court rules”
North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. will not be recused from two high-profile cases involving his father, the Republican Senate leader. The court’s Republican justices denied Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s motion requesting Berger Jr.’s recusal on Friday, writing that the Senate leader was involved in the case in an official capacity only — not a personal one.
“We believe that Justice Berger can and will execute his responsibilities in this case fairly and impartially,” the majority wrote. Rather than deciding on recusal himself, Berger Jr. referred the motion to the full court to consider. In a dissenting opinion, the court’s two Democrats noted that the Code of Judicial Conduct makes no distinction between family members acting in their official capacity and personal capacity in its rules around recusal. Justice Allison Riggs, who authored the dissent, noted that Justice Berger previously refused to recuse himself in another case involving his father that challenged the state’s voter ID law.
“To achieve the desired outcome in this case, members of this Court who typically ascribe to a strict textualist philosophy are eager to add words to the Code of Judicial Conduct,” Riggs wrote. “… I suspect the reason we have not changed these rules is simple — the optics of overhauling existing ethics standards to accommodate Justice Berger and Senator Berger are problematic, to put it mildly.” In both cases, Cooper is challenging laws passed by the General Assembly that strip him of his appointments to various boards and commissions. One of those laws, which is currently blocked by a lower court’s order, would drastically restructure state and local election boards and give all appointments to legislative leaders — including Berger Jr.’s father, Senate leader Phil Berger, who is named as a defendant in both cases.
ELB Book Corner: Bob Bauer: “A Common Question about ‘The Unraveling’”
I’m pleased to welcome Bob Bauer to the ELB Book Corner, writing about his new book, The Unraveling. Here is the first of three guest posts:
Since the publication of my book, The Unraveling, I have been asked why, during this norm crushing experience with Donald Trump, I chose to ground my reflection in a fair degree of professional self-criticism. The objection goes something like this: whatever second thoughts you have had on positions taken or advice given, your sins and those associated with Trump’s brand of politics must be weighed on different scales.
I note, first, that my self-examination only goes so far. There are controversial positions I’ve taken, say, on money and politics, which have not changed radically over the years. I continue to believe that continued reliance on the post-Watergate model of campaign finance regulation is mistaken (and futile).
However, on other topics, it seems to me that if we are going to have a productive debate about reviving the norms of democratic politics the conversation should open with some show of humility. When will-to- win becomes overpowering, because the issues are deemed existential, ends are soon supposed to justify the means. Both parties can fall into this trap, though one of them—Trump’s—sees this not as a trap but as the portal through which to march to political dominance.
I suggest in the book that norms are upheld or weakened as a result of individual choices that all those in political or government positions make. A norm is an abstraction, made meaningful by what an actor chooses to do in particular circumstances. How actors make these choices defines an ethical politics, and a politics devoid of ethics is not really “democratic politics.” I share the view expressed by the political theorist Bernard Crick in his “defense of politics: that “to act morally in politics is to consider the results of one’s actions,” and that “however convinced [men and women are] of the rightness of their party, they must compromise its claims to the needs of some electoral and legal framework.”
I offer the example from early in my career of the Democrats making a run at bringing the Internal Revenue Service into the business of containing “negative” campaign speech for which then-available tax credits would be denied. They did not care for negative campaigning, in large part because they did not care for the success of these attacks in the Republican resurgence culminating in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Putting the IRS in the middle of judging the ‘negative” quality of campaign speech was a dreadful idea. The proposal went nowhere but my advocacy of this proposal reflected ethical tone deafness. And— with qualifications—the same goes for the use of the RICO statute to undermine then majority whip Tom DeLay’s plans to spend massive “soft” money to retain Republican control of the body.
To address these issues forthrightly is not by any means to engage in “moral equivalency.” I am second to none in my disgust with Trumpist political attacks on democratic norms and institutions. But the book looks to the common ground that Democrats and Republicans can find to resist the worst of what this kind of politics, and an unethical politics more generally, portends for the health of the democracy. In The Unraveling, I address urgently needed short-term and longer-term responses to the currently troubled state of democratic self-governance, including presidential abuse of power, the controversies over the Supreme Court, the rise in the resort to the impeachment process, and the challenge to professional, nonpartisan election administration. I describe my involvement in those projects, working with any and all who share these concerns, while remaining a very committed Democrat.