Unelected tech multibillionaire Elon Musk is heavily involved in government actions that impact his personal finances. As head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has been dismantling U.S. government institutions and slashing staff at nearly a dozen federal agencies that have more than 30 ongoing investigations into Musk’s six companies.

Following the unethical lead of his enabler President Trump, Musk is capitalizing on his new—and murky—position of government power to reap personal profits with flagrant disregard for federal law. Musk is not only dodging the problem of his own conflicts of interest, he’s eliminating the very people who have been monitoring those conflicts.

In his DOGE role, Musk is operating without little oversight and zero accountability. While President Trump has given Musk free reign as a government operative, ostensibly to carry out his plans to cut government spending, he repeatedly concedes he has no clue what Musk is actually doing. The most recent example is Trump’s bafflement on Musk’s meeting with the India Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Musk has substantial business interests in India.

Fortunately, the courts are invoking constitutional law in an attempt to hold Musk accountable, because it’s clear that the president refuses to do so. Federal judges have deemed illegal Musk’s unhinged chopping of government contracts, terminating of federal employees, and cutting of funding for medical research. The judges have also blocked some of Musk’s conniving plans for further unlawful action.

After contributing over $288 million to the Trump campaign to get his way in the new Trump administration, Musk, the world’s richest man, is the unabashed avatar in what many political pundits and journalists have identified as an unholy oligarchy seizing control of Washington.

 Musk is shredding long-standing government institutions in an attempt to root out “waste, fraud and abuse” in federal spending. On the face of it, this sounds like a noble goal that most if not all American citizens would be on board with. The problem is that in his breakneck speed of executing the purported task Musk is interfering with government agencies that are overseeing investigations into his companies, even as he continues to make new government deals that benefit his companies.

Federal law prohibits executive branch employees from “participating personally and substantially in a particular Government matter that will affect his own financial interests.” Trump could claim Musk is not an executive branch employee, though this claim would be undermined by the fact that Trump has granted Musk and DOGE the capacity to review the spending and staffing of every department in the executive branch.

Musk’s companies have reportedly gained over $20 billion in U.S. government contracts and subsidies. SpaceX alone raked in over $15 billion in federal contracts with NASA. Dizzying is the list of Musk’s federal contracts and the entangled web of investigations of his companies. It will take time to see how these numerous lawsuits, complaints, and investigations play out in the courts.

Meanwhile, DOGE has fired officials and inspectors general from agencies such as the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Labor, Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that were investigating Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has fielded hundreds of complaints on Tesla and could provide regulations on Musk’s other companies, has been shuttered for now by DOGE, with Musk writing “CFPB RIP” on his social media platform X. Musk is also targeting the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an agency which has fined him millions of dollars for unlawful business dealings and is currently investigating Musk’s failure to properly disclose his purchase of Twitter stock in 2022.

White House messaging on the issue of Musk’s conflicts of interest has been confused and inconclusive, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying, preposterously, that Musk will monitor himself, only to be contradicted by Trump who says he’s doing it.

The Appropriations Clause of the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7,known colloquially as “the power of the purse,” states: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” Congress, not the executive branch, controls federal spending. This clause helps prevent corruption by requiring that Congress review and approve all spending requests responsibly. Thus, Musk’s meddling in the financial records of government agencies and terminating bureaucrats’ careers that were approved for congressional funding is a violation of constitutional law.

The American people deserve transparency and accountability from someone like Musk who now wields enormous power in the U.S. government.