Rep. Jasmine Crockett Opens Up About The Reality Of Elon Musk Getting His Hands On Federal Funding

Does she have a point?

HuffPost reports that Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) reveals how bad things could get if Elon Musk gets his hands on federal funding.

During an interview on MSNBC on Feb. 2, the congresswoman opened up about the curiosity behind Musk’s needs on Capitol Hill. Several lawmakers are curious as to why Musk deserves access to federal funding — something that even elected officials don’t have. “So when you start talking about who should have access to literally the system that controls approximately $6 trillion of our dollars, I don’t really understand,” Crockett said.

“The people that worked in those positions could have only distributed money per the law, so why is it that the DOGE committee would have to have access?”

As one of Trump’s most loyal allies, the tech billionaire has made his way into federal territory, making changes that are not sitting well with elected officials on both the Democratic and Republican sides. At the top of February 2025, Musk and members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were given access to the federal payment system by the Treasury Department, according to ABC News. The access demand allegedly caused a huge rift between Musk and acting Treasury Secretary David Lebryk, who afterward was placed on leave for resisting.

Crockett said there are a number of GOP lawmakers praying for Musk’s downfall. “Can I tell you that Republicans want to see Elon go down?” she told host Alex Witt. “I can. Now, will they come out publicly and say that? No, because they’re concerned about whether or not he’ll spend money in their next elections.”

Crockett has been an open critic of Musk’s position as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), still questioning what the agency really does. But now sitting on the newly-created DOGE subcommittee, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Crockett is calling on her Republican colleagues to stand up for what’s right before it’s too late.

“There were Republicans that silently, or in the background, were cheering us on,” Crockett remembered.

“And saying ‘this is wrong.’ Like they knew we had negotiated, and all of a sudden, this guy who’s not elected makes a tweet on Twitter.”

When she was elected to office, the former attorney was banned from practicing law at the risk of biased practices or being lured into payoffs. She called Musk out for being able to work for the government while being the beneficiary of government contracts. “It’s really awful,” she said.

“There is no reason for any political appointee, if you can even call him that, to have this kind of access. There’s none.”

Lawmakers, like the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, seemingly agree with Crockett. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Wyden said any “politically-motivated meddling” in the payment systems “risks severe damage to our country and the economy.”

“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs,” Wyden wrote.

“I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”