By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 25, 2025 ~
During Donald Trump’s first term as president, while Mike Pompeo was serving as his Secretary of State, the State Department authorized a government contract on September 23, 2019 to translate and publish a book for young people that lavished praise on Elon Musk as an inspiring role model.
The book’s title was: “Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Young Readers Edition.” It was authored by then Bloomberg/Businessweek writer, Ashlee Vance, and based on his New York Times bestseller for adults, “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and The Quest for a Fantastic Future.”
Curiously, however, the book wasn’t for U.S. children or even children on the same continent. The State Department award went to an organization called Steps to Success Public Association in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan.
The federal account from which the $17,054 contract came was USAID, the federal agency that has been gutted and reputationally savaged as riddled with fraud, waste and abuse by Elon Musk.
The Associated Press, which is now banned from White House press conferences by the Trump administration, reported on February 3 that Musk had said this recently about USAID:
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm in it. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down.”
The U.S. State Department carries this statement on Kyrgyzstan:
“The United States established diplomatic relations with Kyrgyzstan in 1991 following the nation’s independence from the Soviet Union. The United States supports Kyrgyzstan in its development of an inclusive democracy based upon the rule of law and respect for human rights. Kyrgyzstan’s 2017 presidential election marked the first peaceful transfer of presidential power from one democratically-elected president to another in post-Soviet Central Asia. Significant impediments to Kyrgyzstan’s development include corruption, aging infrastructure, high unemployment that fuels labor migration and dependence on remittances, and endemic poverty. Kyrgyzstan, however, benefits from a robust civil society and a relatively free media sector.”
Despite Musk receiving billions of dollars in classified federal contracts through his rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, the Wall Street Journal broke the bombshell news in the fall of last year that Musk has been secretly speaking with Vladimir Putin since 2022 – despite Putin being on a U.S. sanction list and Musk holding classified information about U.S. technology development.
The speed at which Musk has endeavored to get into the computer systems of USAID, shut it down, and even strip its name from its building – raises the question as to what exactly resides in those files that Musk and/or Trump are so hell bent on keeping from the American people.
Musk may rue the day that he and his chainsaw came into the crosshairs of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the former Harvard Law Professor who is the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee.
Warren and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, have received acknowledgement from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), that it has opened an investigation into Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for it tapping into the computers that run the payment system of the U.S. Treasury.
Today, at 2 p.m., Warren has convened a forum in the Senate Dirksen Office Building in Washington, D.C. to investigate the consequences of President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s efforts to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the federal agency that has returned over $21 billion to Americans who have been scammed by mortgage lenders, credit card companies, megabanks and other financial predators. You can watch the livestream of the forum here.
