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Elon Musk said two very interesting and contradictory things related to his government employment during a Tesla earnings call Tuesday.
First, he suggested that he’s just about done focusing full time on his ad hoc role taking a chainsaw to elements of the federal government with the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Starting next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said during the Tesla call.
That simple idea — that Musk might spend more time on his actual businesses — was enough to spark a rebound Wednesday in Tesla’s stock price, which had been cratering due in large part to Musk’s polarizing role in Trump’s’ administration.
But in the next breath Musk implied he wouldn’t be leaving government entirely, and maybe not until 2029, when President Donald Trump’s term is over.
“I’ll have to continue doing it for, I think, probably the remainder of the president’s term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back, which will do if it has the chance,” Musk said, adding: “I think I’ll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful.”
What exactly does this mean, and what is the legal authority for Musk to remain at the White House?
Musk’s role is already on the edge of what’s officially allowed in Washington. The White House has said he is a “special government employee,” which allowed him, unlike full-time federal workers, to continue making money from the “like 17 jobs” he talks about having. CNN has reported Musk is not getting a paycheck for his government work.
Giving Musk broad authority to oversee DOGE, fire workers and gut agencies across government was always a misapplication of the special government employee law, according to Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service.
Special government employees are supposed “to bring in specialized, expert skill that you don’t have internal to the government,” he said.
But the Trump administration, in hiring Musk and others in this way, “misused the purpose of this to walk past a lot of the conflict issues, the clearance issues that you would have in a permanent, full-time employee.”
“There’s no way that Elon Musk should have his hands around the kinds of decision-making that he does on issues that have such hard relevance to his private financial interests,” Stier said.
Rather than a successful efficiency operation, Stier argued the DOGE effort has been wasteful. He argued that the firing of IRS employees at tax time will cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue this year — more than the entire federal payroll.
DOGE has posted claimed cost-cutting on a website, but the figures have been difficult to verify. Musk has previously said he might be able to achieve $1 trillion in savings, but that does not appear to have occurred. And the real impacts on government are not yet known.
“I don’t think we do understand yet the full contours, because it has been an unbelievably nontransparent operation,” Stier said.
There are rules for special government employees. Most importantly, they are only supposed to work for the US government for 130 days in a 365-day period.
It’s not clear if Musk’s first day was Inauguration Day on January 20, or later. His position as a special government employee — not a volunteer but not an official government employee — was announced in early February.
If he technically leaves government service at the end of May, that would be 130 days after January 20, although the reference to “special government employees” in US code suggests they can serve their 130 days intermittently. But Musk specifically did not say he was leaving government service. Instead, he said he will still contribute a portion of his time each week to DOGE and the government even after May.
Stier said he would not be surprised if the White House sidesteps rules to keep Musk’s counsel after the law says he should no longer have an official role.
“I don’t think they followed the rules in the way they’ve managed so far,” Stier said, so they likely won’t follow them in the future.
The White House declined to comment on CNN’s request for more information about what Musk’s role might be after the 130-day limit for special government employees.
There is some irony in the flexibility Trump is apparently giving Musk, since the administration’s effort to shrink the federal workforce was built on removing flexibility. Workers who had been working from home were required to come back to the office. Trump also complained about government workers who had jobs outside of government in addition to their government work, although he did not provide any evidence.
Special government employees are not exactly full-time government employees, although they are expected to adhere to ethics rules for government workers and to file financial disclosures.
They may or may not be paid, but unlike other government workers there are not limits on their income outside of government as there are for some other government workers, according to a brief from the Office of Government Ethics.
Plus, the Department of Justice has argued in the past that SGEs are subject to the emoluments clause, which means they cannot take payments from foreign governments. If Musk filled out a required financial disclosure, it has not been publicly released, although CNN has documented many ways in which his business interests intersect with his government cutting.
Trump has previously acknowledged Musk would leave his administration this year, but said that the work of DOGE will continue.
“There will be a point where he is gonna have to leave and when he does the secretaries will take totally over and DOGE will stay active,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One in early April. “We have a lot of smart people. A lot of those people I believe are gonna go into the agencies and they’re gonna work on it from the inside.”
Musk is one of many Trump administration officials with multiple jobs. The leader of the Office of Government Ethics, the government agency that might oversee such potential conflicts for special government employees, was fired by Trump shortly after his term began. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is currently acting director of the ethics office in addition to his day job managing Trump’s trade negotiations.
CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.
