The world’s richest man wants answers about how members of Congress have become “strangely wealthy” despite their relatively modest government salaries.
During a town hall in Wisconsin on Sunday night, Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would look into how certain lawmakers have amassed generational wealth, the New York Post reported.
Musk was responding to a question from an attendee who asked whether DOGE had found any evidence of money transfers from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
“Yeah, so,” Musk began as he appeared to be organizing his thoughts. “There is a massive amount of corruption, but it is circuitous. So what happens is there’s money that — obviously it’s your taxpayer money — that is then sent to various government organizations who then send it to NGO’s, which an NGO is a non-governmental organization, but obviously it’s a government-funded non-governmental organization.
“It’s just an organization. It’s just a government, and effectively there’s a giant fraud loophole which is that the government can send money to an NGO that is then no longer governed by the laws of the United States,” he continued.
“So they’ll send the money overseas to one NGO, then they’ll go through a bunch of them, and then, I’m highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned,” he said. “But it is a circuitous route. It doesn’t go directly, but let’s just say that there’s a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress where I’m trying to connect the dots of, ‘How do they become rich?’”
Dozens of longtime members of Congress have amassed millionaire-level wealth over their careers. Among the richest are former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), with an estimated net worth of around $250 million, and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whose personal fortune is valued at roughly $552 million, The Post said.
Much of Pelosi’s wealth stems from the successful investments she and her husband, venture capitalist Paul Pelosi, have made in major tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Netflix.
Scott’s wealth primarily comes from his business ventures prior to his time in the Senate. He co-founded HCA Healthcare, a major operator of hospitals and medical facilities across Florida, and also launched Solantic, a chain of urgent-care clinics.
“How do they get $20 million if they’re earning $200,000 a year?” Musk further pondered. “We’re going to try to figure it out and certainly stop it from happening.”
Pelosi, in particular, has come under scrutiny for her and her husband’s unusually successful stock trading.
In December, top-ranked podcaster Joe Rogan and former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich discussed the situation, noting that the couple has managed to beat the odds in highly suspicious ways, leading some to believe husband Paul has been getting insider trading info from his congresswoman wife, though no one has come forward with any hard evidence to show that.
Rogan told Blagojevich during the interview that someone developed an app called Autopilot, which tracks stock trading by members of Congress, including Pelosi.
“Oh, it’s so good,” Rogan said. “I’m not really a stock market person. I don’t pay attention. But, I do know people that are very invested in the stock market. And ‘Pelosi stock tracker’ is legit. Like, you could find out what she’s buying and you should buy it.”
“She’s a really good stockbroker Rod,” Rogan added sarcastically. “She’s super good at it.”
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