Top Senators call for federal probe into Musk’s alleged contact with Putin

Two top Senate Democrats have called for a federal investigation into Elon Musk’s reported contacts with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides.

The lawmakers have urged the Pentagon and Justice Department to determine whether Musk’s alleged relations with a US adversary while holding major government contracts puts national security at risk.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the world’s richest person has had “multiple, high level conversations” with Putin since 2022, which the Kremlin has denied.

Musk wrote on his X platform on Friday that he’s “going to find out who’s making these accusations and nuke them”.

In another post, he slammed the two Democrats – Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees – as “puppets” and “knuckleheads”.

The members of Congress sent a letter on Friday to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Defence Department Inspector General Robert Storch raising “serious questions regarding Mr Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a [security] clearance holder”.

The multi-billionaire claims to hold a top secret level clearance and his SpaceX company – one of the top contractors to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) – is deeply embedded in the federal government’s defence and intelligence infrastructure.

“Russia’s ambitions in the space domain pose a direct threat to US national security,” the senators wrote, pointing to Pentagon assertions earlier this year that the US adversary has deployed a counter-space weapon that may be capable of attacking other satellites in low-earth orbit. Moscow has rejected the claim as “fake news from Washington”.

Reed and Shaheen noted that, unlike others with high-level security clearance, Musk does not appear to report his contacts with foreign government officials.

They added that the billionaire’s communications with Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko, comes amid a Justice Department finding that Kiriyenko and other top officials were involved in an effort to seed Kremlin propaganda on social media, including on the Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) platform.

The Justice Department has said that Russia’s covert influence operation aimed to “bolster” its interests, in part by reducing international support for Ukraine and influencing voters in the US presidential election.

“For these reasons, we urge an immediate review to ascertain whether Mr Musk’s relationship with multiple high-level Russian officials warrant an investigation and a determination by the Department of Defense’s senior debarment official whether SpaceX should exclude Mr Musk’s involvement in current or future US Government contracts,” Reed and Shaheen wrote.

Musk, who backed Trump’s successful 2024 re-election bid with campaign appearances and millions of dollars in donations, was picked by the president-elect earlier this week to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency”.

But he has also participated in the incoming president’s diplomatic efforts.

Musk joined Trump’s calls over the past week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, as well as a meeting with Argentinian President Javier Milei at Trump’s Florida home.

The BBC’s US partner, CBS News, reported on Friday that Musk recently visited the residence of Iran’s United Nations ambassador in New York.

It is not clear if Trump or his national security team were aware of the meeting.

Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran and Iran’s foreign minister denied the meeting to state media on Saturday.

“This was a fabricated story by American media, and the motives behind this can also be speculated,” Abbas Araqchi said.