Elon Musk's Hostile Takeover

[Passages]

Elon Musk and his allies have been sowing chaos in the civil service and hijacking government infrastructure. Journalist Nathan Tankus explains why.


Feb. 6, 2025
Arjun Singh


Elon Musk has bought his way into the Trump administration and is now muscling his way into nearly every federal agency. But the unelected billionaire who’s been forcibly installing his allies while purging career civil servants throughout the federal government just faced his first roadblock when a judge prevented him from accessing the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, a move that would have given him an unprecedented amount of leverage over trillions of public dollars.

Transcript:
Arjun from the levers. Reader supported newsroom, this is lever time. I'm Arjun Singh.

Elon Musk wants to take over the government, and now the unelected billionaire seems closer to that goal than ever. For days, Musk and his allies have stormed through Washington, DC, demanding access to sensitive information and eliminating career civil servants who stand in his way. Now they have control of the government's multi trillion dollar payment system, and it seems like they won't stop until Musk has absolute control. It's a situation that many are calling a crisis, one that could have profound and dire consequences. One of those people is journalist Nathan tankus as one of the lead reporters covering Musk's takeover, tankus has spent the week talking with sources who have witnessed this hostile takeover firsthand. Today on lever time, I'll sit down with Nathan tankus To hear the extent of Musk's takeover and why tankus thinks this could soon evolve into one of the worst catastrophes in American history.

Arjun Singh 1:08
Just a quick note here, before we hear my conversation with Nathan after Nathan and I spoke on Thursday morning, a federal judge blocked Elon Musk for me given information from the Treasury Department's payment system, two of Musk's allies, Marco allez and Tom Kraus, however, are still allowed to access the information, but only in a read only format to get the latest news. Go to levernews.com and subscribe to our new newsletter. Okay, here's our conversation. So you know, we have a lot to talk about today. It's been just whirlwind week. But before we get into that, Nathan, I just want to ask you, how are you doing?

I'm doing well now, when I first learned about it by reading Jeff Stein's reporting in the Washington Post, and about halfway through reading the article, I had a panic attack, wow. And I have, I'm not that's not something I usually have. And I managed to calm down a little bit and start making actions called about a half a dozen former Treasury officials that I'm familiar with, and then wrote my my piece that came out on Monday, in a 19 hour scramble with only a break for brunch, just to be a human for a bit.
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