The White House said Monday that reports the US is considering national security reviews of some of Elon Musk’s business ventures are “not true.”
“There’s a lot of interest in those reportings,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about a Bloomberg report from last week that such reviews were under consideration by Biden administration officials. “Those reportings are not true. So, we’ll leave that there. The national security review — that is not true.”
Bloomberg on Thursday reported that US officials were discussing reviews of Musk’s Starlink satellite service in light of comments he made suggesting that he will stop supplying the internet service to war-torn Ukraine because it has already cost him $80 million. There was also reportedly concern about a series of Musk’s tweets that appeared to take an increasingly Russia-friendly position in the ongoing war with Ukraine.
Officials were said to be particularly interested in Musk’s proposed $44 billion takeover of Twitter using financing from a group of foreign investors. The report suggested that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a secretive government panel that reviews mergers that could result in a foreign company controlling an American business, could be used to quash a deal.
Bloomberg didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
