Tech billionaire Elon Musk's private security detail was deputized by the Marshals Service, alarming experts,
according to Mother Jones.
"The Marshals Service regularly deputizes people outside the agency—often local or state cops—to help with specific tasks for a set period of time," the report explained. "These deputized officers are known as special deputy marshals, and they usually have the power to make federal arrests, execute search warrants, serve subpoenas, and carry firearms in federal buildings, just like regular deputy marshals do."
Musk's team used them after a staffer in the Department of Government Efficiency told Marshals that Jan. 6 defendants weren't being released fast enough. A marshal "reportedly prodded judges," said MoJo.
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Last month, The New York Times and the Washington Post reported that DOGE used the Marshals to break into the offices of a small federal agency, leading to "a frantic and 'traumatizing' scene," the report said.
It rattled MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who implied it was strange for a federal agency to turn on another, the report continued.
“We have reason to question whether the men reported as US marshals, now in multiple press accounts, are actually US marshals in the usual sense,” Maddow said.
The confusion is whether they were indeed marshals or if they were Musk's private security.
The Justice Department refused to give Maddow any information on the men's identities, but a nonprofit is now suing using the Freedom of Information Act.
"Even though federal policy allows the Marshals Service to deputize private actors, it’s rare for the agency to do so," Mother Jones said. "The former USMS officers I spoke with had never witnessed it happening. All the special deputy marshals" that one supervisory deputy marshal in New York until 2020 "interacted with were from law enforcement agencies like the NYPD."
“It’d be unusual to deputize someone who wasn’t a law enforcement officer or didn’t have the law enforcement experience required,” special deputy marshal James Meissner told Mother Jones.
There is an open question about whether Trump is politicizing the Marshals Service and if that could have "constitutional implications."
Rutgers University Law School professor David Noll, who studies private enforcement of the law, told Mother Jones that “deputizing purely private actors” is “not really a thing that’s been done in the 21st century or the 20th century."
“If you have a private security force that is exercising the power of the marshals, you have to start worrying about whether they are acting in the public interest and whether they understand the rules that apply to marshals,” Noll told the outlet.
Another expert agreed that alarm bells are ringing.
“The risk to people’s civil rights is enormous,” said Jonathan Smith, who helped lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division during the Obama administration. Typically, when private forces gain policing power, he said, “there are real questions about who they’re accountable to and what rules they’re going to play by.”
