Elon Musk, DOGE to review 'strangely wealthy' federal lawmakers

During his town hall event in Wisconsin on Sunday, Elon Musk said that he and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were going to review those in Congress who are "strangely wealthy."

"There’s a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress," Musk told the crowd at the event held ahead of the state’s Supreme Court election.
 

Musk said he was "trying to connect the dots of how did they become rich while earning— how did they get $20 million if they’re earning $200,000 a year?"

"Nobody can explain that," Musk continued. "We’re going to try to figure it out and certainly stop it from happening."

Among the wealthiest members of Congress are former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose net worth is around $250 million, and Senator Rick Scott, whose net worth is around $552 million. The former’s wealth has largely come from investments she and her husband, Paul Pelosi, have made into companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, while the latter gained much of his fortune before entering Congress by co-founding HCA Healthcare, which runs Florida hospitals and healthcare facilities, and Solantic, a chain of urgent care clinics, per the New York Post.

In January, Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez raised concerns about insider trading in Congress. "There needs to be Democrats who walk the walk and talk the talk. There is an insane amount of hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy is what gets exploited to use the cynicism and wherever there’s a hypocritical window. For example, I think one of the biggest examples of this is insider trading in Congress." 

Ocasio-Cortez and others have called for a ban on elected officials trading stocks to prevent insider trading, and in January, bipartisan legislation was reintroduced to ban such a thing from happening, the TRUST in Congress Act. 

This is the latest review for potential waste for fraud undertaken by Elon Musk and DOGE since the Trump administration entered office in January. As of Monday afternoon, DOGE’s tracker website states that there have been an estimated savings of $140 billion made so far by the department, with thousands of contracts, grants, and leases being terminated, including funding for climate change initiatives in Peru and gender equity programs in Mexico.