Tesla’s name was quietly scrubbed from a State Department forecast that had suggested Elon Musk’s company was set to receive a $400 million payday.
On Wednesday, the agency’s 2025 fiscal procurement projection had highlighted plans to spend big with a five-year contract for “Armored Tesla,” Drop Site News reported.
Hours after the story published, though, the publicly visible spreadsheet was altered to remove Tesla’s name. The line item now says that the contract will be for “armored electric vehicles,” without specifying a particular supplier.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a spokesperson for the State Department said that the initial line item was a mistake and a deal had not yet been struck with a particular supplier.
The spokesperson said that Joe Biden’s administration had asked the agency to explore options to purchase armored electric vehicles, and the only company that responded was Tesla in May 2024.
The spreadsheet switch-up was first flagged by the author of the initial report, who suggested it was intended to conceal Tesla’s involvement in a deal.
“After @DropSiteNews revealed Tesla was forecast to be given a $400 million contract for ‘Armored Tesla,’ the State Department altered its spreadsheet to obscure Tesla’s role,” Ryan Grim wrote on X. “Metadata shows the spreadsheet was revised several hours after our story published.”
The initial report about the apparent sweetheart deal had sparked outcry from the left, as Musk has become an influential force in President Donald Trump’s new administration, railing against government spending.
As the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the world’s richest man has leveled accusations of corruption, bias, and fraud against the federal bureaucracy—without supplying concrete evidence.
Late Wednesday night, Musk wrote on X that he was “pretty sure” that Tesla hadn’t made a $400 million deal with the government.
“No one mentioned it to me, at least,” he added.
Before Wednesday night, the line item featuring Tesla was last updated on Dec. 13, after Trump’s election but before his inauguration.
At an Oval Office press conference on Tuesday, Musk was pressed by reporters about potential conflicts of interest in his work at DOGE, given he is the billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and X.
He dismissed the concerns outright.
“We actually are trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said. “We post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent.”
