Recently Trump took control of various regulators.
Suppose that one of Musk’s businesses was facing serious charges (with evidence of criminal behaviour.)
Could Trump simply order that the investigation stop?!
(Mods, if this belongs elsewhere e,g. in politics, feel free to move it.)
I suspect that folks will want to discuss not just the factual answer, but the implications of that answer, so that’s probably the best bet.
I believe the president can request/order the DOJ to deploy it’s resources on certain cases and not others. You can connect the dots.
musk has gone after all the federal oversight bodies that are investigating his 6 companies: “At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s six companies, according to a review by The New York Times.”
Elon Musk’s Business Empire Scores Benefits Under Trump Shake-Up - The New York Times
This is totally not a conflict of interest as Elon Musk has assured us that he will withdraw himself from any potential conflict. You trust Elon Musk, right? Look at this innocent face!
Stranger
There are some nuances about the levers of control that would be employed but generally, the President could one way or another stop the legal consequences in essentially any of these investigations.
For criminal charges, prosecuted through he normal chain of command at the Department of Justice: The president can order the Attorney General to stop the investigation and drop the charges, if any. If the attorney ordered to take the specific action won’t do it, they can be fired and replaced until the president finds someone who will do it. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/13/danielle-sassoon-eric-adams-prosecutor-00204146
If a special counsel is prosecuting the case, the answer is probably the same. There are special regulations in the Department of Justice that apply to special counsels to give them a certain amount of independence when pressing charges, but these don’t actually matter in practice. Smith special counsel investigation - Wikipedia
There are administrative agencies whose heads serve at the pleasure of the president, such as the Secretary of the Treasury. Again, the president can just order the Secretary to drop any investigation coupled with a threat of “do it or be fired.”
There are independent regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose leadership is intended to be non-partisan. The SEC, by way of example, is led by a five member Commission. No more than three commissioners can be members of the same party. They serve for staggered five year terms, with one term ending each year. In theory, they can only be removed for cause, which is a limitation on the president’s authority to impose his will on the agency (see Humphrey’s Executor v. United States). But, the President appoints commissioners to serve and the president can choose any of the Commissioners to be the chair so if the current chair won’t do the president’s bidding, they can be replaced by any other commissioner on a moment’s notice. Over the long run, there is at least one chance every year to get a brand new chair of the Commission who will do whatever the president says. Worse yet, historically, when a chair is about to be demoted to regular commissioner (usually during a change of presidential administrations) the chair resigns from the commission, so the president then gets an extra seat to fill. It doesn’t take too long for the president to choose the chair of his heart’s desire. The chair also gets the power to direct the day-to-day activities of the staff, though there are certain powers that the commission can execute only by a vote of the whole body. So, if Musk were being charged by the SEC (and he is), the whole commission would have to vote to bring the charges or to settle or drop them. However, the chair acting alone can direct the amount of resources that the staff will direct to pursue the case, so a case could be killed simply by starving it of any resources. The current president has also taken steps to exert greater oversight of the rulemaking agenda of independent agencies. Trump claims expanded power over independent agencies : NPR
There are inspectors general at both executive and independent agencies that investigate waste fraud and abuse and legal malfeasance by the agencies. These IGs investigate allegations that, for corrupt reasons, the agency isn’t pursuing cases it should be pursuing, They are
supposed to benefit from some level of independence from the agencies they investigate but, it turns out, in this administration, they don’t. Trump uses mass firing to remove independent inspectors general at a series of agencies
The current Supreme Court majority is also hostile to the Humphrey’s Executor precedent cited above and seems to support a legal theory called the “unitary executive,” which basically means that the president ultimately has sole authority to determine how the laws will be enforced and to fire people at any agency he chooses (independent or otherwise), regardless of the limitations Congress has placed on the firing authority. If the court fully adopts this theory, and many legal commentators expect it will, the president wouldn’t even have to rely on lesser government officers to interfere with or drop investigations or prosecutions. The president could just do so unilaterally.
The president also has pardon authority.
Thank you Stranger! I was starting to wonder if I could trust Musk and Trump but your statement has reaffirmed my faith that they’re only interested in making the country better and not just looking out for their own best interests!
I went to college at Texas Tech University in the early 90’s. Living in West Texas, I was a very good Republican back in those days. I remember one summer when California had a lot of rolling blackouts, and I believed the stories that it was a production problem brought on by California’s strict environmental regulations that prevented new power plants from being built. Therefore, they didn’t have enough infrastructure to support demand. I truly believed that the crisis was entirely due to liberal mismanagement and interference.
At the same time, Enron was a shining star in Texas. They were rising fast and making tons of money! George HW Bush held Enron up as one of his points of light, an example of a company using strong conservative principles to earn huge profits, and in return could pay huge returns for investors! Recruiters came to my college campus, and I interviewed with them a couple of times but never received an offer. I was very sad about that because I thought they’d be a great company to work for!
Imagine my surprise when Enron collapsed! And worse, how could a conservative company mismanage themselves so criminally?? More so when I saw the documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room” and learned that the California energy crisis was entirely manufactured by Enron for the sole purpose of raising electricity rates and artificially inflating their profits! As a bonus for them, the Democrat governor of California was recalled and replaced by a Republican Governator. I realized that Enron’s actions were sinister, unethical, anti American, and completely against what I believed were conservative principles.
This was one of the early times that I realized my faith in Republican’s was unfounded. It was the start of my journey of questioning why I identified as a Republican at all. These questions, along with the disinformation that was spread justifying the Iraq War is what ultimately led to my utter rejection of the Republican party entirely.
I am 100% certain that this current administration is utterly corrupt. Imagine if the lies and disinformation they spread results in ethical leaders forced out of positions of authority only to be replaced with toadies who can easily be bribed to cooperate with the corruption thus making it far worse. Actually, don’t imagine, it’s reality today!
Even so, I have hopes that their machinations will be fully exposed someday. I strongly suspect the extent of their misdeeds will exceed even my most far-fetched ideas. Heck, it’s possible, nay probable, that Der Trihs is 100% correct in what he’s saying about this administration! More than once he’s said some ridiculously far fetched things that caused me to roll my eyes only for him to be much closer to the truth in the end.
What I hope ultimately happens from this is people get the same wakeup call that I did 20 years ago. I know too many people that vote Republican simply because they were raised Republican, they identify Republican, and they don’t even consider any alternatives to voting Republican. Hopefully this knocks some sense into them to do some soul searching and recognize that their ideals aren’t supported by reality.
Lot’s of luck on that. I enjoyed your story of coming around to my POV, but the sheepies will just find some way to blame the coming collapse on Biden. Or Obama. Or Clinton. Actually the 2008 collapse was partly Clinton’s responsibility since he signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
