FILE - Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk listens as Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

WASHINGTON – Following reports of Elon Musk’s regular contact with Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials for the last two years, U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a senior member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, and Jack Reed (D-RI), the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, are calling for the Departments of Justice and Defense to investigate whether this behavior should force a review of Musk’s continued involvement in SpaceX’s contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and Intelligence Community (IC). In a letter to U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General Robert Storch and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Shaheen and Reed detail how communications between Russian government officials and an individual with a security clearance put U.S. national security at risk. In a separate letter to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, the Senators express their concern with U.S. Space Force’s overreliance on SpaceX for national security space activities and importance of competition on space acquisition to remain access to these critical capabilities in the event of a crisis or conflict. They assert that these reports raise questions regarding DOD’s and IC’s use of SpaceX satellites for sensitive military operations and underscore DOD’s role in encouraging competition in the commercial space industry to avoid overreliance on a single provider.

In their letter to DOD and DOJ, the Senators wrote: “These relationships between a well-known U.S. adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder. […] We urge an immediate review into this reporting to ascertain whether Mr. Musk’s conversation and specific ties to 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 any and all U.S. Government contracts.”