Washington, DC – Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Jared Moskowitz, Ranking Member of Subcommittee on Oversight and Intelligence, today sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding answers on media reports alleging potentially unlawful procurement activities surrounding $400 million to Elon Musk’s Tesla.  

Text of the letter can be found below. A copy of the PDF can be found here. 

Dear Secretary Rubio,  

We write to you to request answers and documentation to respond to a series of media reports that the Department of State and Elon Musk intended to engage in unlawful procurement activities that would constitute a serious violation of federal procurement laws, and in doing so planned to unlawfully enrich Mr. Musk – a “special government employee” and the largest individual shareholder in Tesla – thereby constituting waste, fraud and abuse against American taxpayers.  Specifically, these reports suggest that the Department may have conspired to line Elon Musk’s pockets by funneling upwards of $400 million to Tesla in the form of procurement contracts. 

The collective actions these damning reports describe potentially constitute a gross violation of several federal procurement statutes and regulations, a breach of the American taxpayers’ trust, and a demonstration of the very waste, fraud, and abuse which Mr. Musk and his allies have claimed must be rooted out.  In fact, it is potentially Mr. Musk’s influence over the State Department and his clear intention to use his access and influence to enrich himself and his other billionaire allies—all the while as the Trump Administration makes draconian cuts to domestic food programs for low-income families and dismisses tens of thousands of federal employees for fabricated allegations of misconduct and sub-par performance—that exemplifies such waste, fraud, and abuse.  

Media reporting on these activities first emerged on February 12, 2025, after Drop Site News reviewed the Department’s publicly available procurement forecasts and noted $400 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars was slated to be spent on “Armored Tesla.”[1]  The next day, reporting in the New York Times cited a response from Trump Administration officials claiming that the plan actually stemmed from Biden Administration engagements with Tesla, and that the Department had no plans to move forward with the potential contract anyway.[2]  

On February 24, reporting by National Public Radio indicated that the Biden Administration plans set aside only $483,000 for electric vehicle purchases for Fiscal Year 2025, yet the Administration provided no explanation for how the Biden Administration’s $483,000 plan increased nearly a thousandfold to $400 million under the Trump Administration.[3]  

In addition, screenshots published by NPR in its February 24 reporting showed that in the two weeks since Drop Site first published news of the procurement of Armored Tesla vehicles, the Department had quietly edited the procurement forecast documents to remove any specific mention of Tesla but did not immediately remove the project itself.[4]  This suggests the Department may have intended to move forward with the project but obscure any involvement by Mr. Musk or Tesla.  Metadata of the document examined by Drop Site verified that the document was edited after the initial press reporting on February 12, 2025, about a forthcoming $400 million giveaway to Musk.[5] Furthermore, the procurement document indicates that it was published in December 2024 – at the end of the Biden Administration – but a publicly available website archive showed no such edited document having appeared on the Internet during the month of December.[6]  This raises serious questions about whether the Department not only scrubbed the document to remove any references to Tesla but also may have backdated the publicly available documentation to give the false impression that every element of these procurement plans – including the $400 million value – originated in the prior Administration.  

These reported actions demonstrate either your willingness as Secretary to allow the Department you lead to be captured by Elon Musk and DOGE, or your inability to prevent such capture from occurring.  The American people deserve transparency and clear answers from you.  Therefore, in keeping with Congress’ constitutional oversight duties, and the jurisdiction of the House Foreign Affairs Committee over the Department of State’s procurement activities, we request written responses to the following questions by no later than 5:00pm EST on March 14, 2025:  

We also request that the Department provide the following by no later than 5:00pm EST on March 14, 2025 the following documentation to support its claimed explanations on this matter:  

We await your response by the deadlines provided and remind you that good-faith compliance with Congress’ oversight requests is undergirded by the United States Constitution.