Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) had a blistering and thorough takedown of tech billionaire Elon Musk's latest claims about supposed mismanagement of federal funds.
On Monday, Musk said his Department of Government Efficiency task force uncovered a serious example of financial misconduct in the federal government: the supposed siphoning of funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house "illegals" in high-end hotels in New York City.
"The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants," wrote Musk on his X platform. "Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order. That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds."
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However, Musk's characterization of the funding in quest was incorrect, Nadler wrote in a reply.
"This is completely false," wrote Nadler. "In 2019, President Trump expanded FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter Program to help local governments offset the costs associated with migrant assistance."
Furthermore, "this funding is strictly separate from FEMA's disaster relief funds and can't be diverted. In October 2024, @SpeakerJohnson confirmed to Fox News that these are 'different programs that have different funding.'"
Also, Nadler wrote, Musk incorrectly characterized this funding to New York City as a secret, illegal payment he just uncovered.
"Congress had already appropriated $650 million for the program for FY2024," he reminded the billionaire.
So far, Musk's quest to unearth fraud in the federal government has yielded mixed results at best. He has claimed to unearth widespread fraudulent payments from the Treasury Department through invalid Social Security Numbers, but appears to have overstated the extent that it's happening, and there were already programs in place policing that activity. Most of the other examples of "fraud" he has unearthed appear to be just expenses for legal federal programs he doesn't agree with, and DOGE has so far operated with extremely limited transparency.