Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Friday, April 10, 2026

A high-profile US defense department official who oversees the agency's artificial intelligence efforts made a profit of up to $24m selling a private investment he held in Elon Musk's AI company earlier this year, according to government ethics records released this month. The value of his stake totaled a maximum of a million dollars when he joined the department.

More

Comments

Admin's note: Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

"Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer at the White House under President George W Bush, said that in general it was a criminal violation for government officials to participate in any government actions that would benefit their own financial interests.

"It sounds pretty weird," he said of the transactions. "There is no way that a decent ethics lawyer would let a [defense department] official hold on to AI stock while he's involved in AI matters.

You would have a very high chance of violating the criminal statute." Federal law prohibits officials from taking actions in their jobs that benefit their own financial interests."

;;

He can apply for a Cabinet Job with those scam credentials.

#1 | Posted by Corky at 2026-04-10 10:40 PM | Reply

The following HTML tags are allowed in comments: a href, b, i, p, br, ul, ol, li and blockquote. Others will be stripped out. Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

Anyone can join this site and make comments. To post this comment, you must sign it with your Drudge Retort username. If you can't remember your username or password, use the lost password form to request it.
Username:
Password:

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy

Drudge Retort