Elon Musk Threatens To Sue Rep. Khanna For… Citing The Lancet About How DOGE Cuts Will Likely Lead To Millions Of Deaths

from the elon-is-a-walking-talking-chilling-effect dept

We’ve been pointing out for years that the supposedly “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk is one of the most aggressive abusers of state power to create chilling effects against his critics. So it should come as little surprise to anyone paying attention, that he’s at it again: threatening to sue Rep. Ro Khanna for Khanna’s comments regarding Musk’s time running (though pretending not to run) DOGE, where Elon took great joy in killing USAID, despite having no congressional mandate to do so. At issue was the following comments from Khanna:

Khanna suggested that the Democratic Party take initiative to hold Musk accountable if they were to regain control over the House of Representatives or the Senate.

“I do believe once we take power, there needs to be accountability,” Khanna said on the “I’ve Had It” podcast. “There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk. You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires, but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”

Khanna continued, “He needs to answer for that. He needs to be subpoenaed. He needs to face investigation. He needs to answer for what he did with DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency]. It’s not just ‘let’s move on.’”

Khanna is referencing a recent Lancet report, which projects the “effects of defunding” USAID on mortality through 2030, and concluding it could lead to 4.5 million child deaths.

So, first things first, Khanna’s statement is clearly not defamatory. First, he doesn’t say that Musk killed that many people. He just says that the results of his cuts while in government should be investigated, and points to the Lancet report. And note that he says “possibly sentenced.” This is clearly him giving his opinion that an investigation should happen based on the Lancet’s analysis. Opinions based on disclosed facts are not defamatory.

Also, Elon Musk is, obviously, a public figure. And thus Musk would need to show actual malice — specifically that Khanna knows that the claims are false. But obviously, Khanna believes the Lancet’s report is worth investigating. There’s no way to prove actual malice.

But, as with so many of Musk’s SLAPP suits, any suit here wouldn’t be about winning. It would be about punishing a public official for daring to suggest that maybe — just maybe — Musk did real damage while running DOGE.

It appears that Musk is really, really sensitive to these claims and has spent days crashing out about it:

One or both of those things apparently didn’t sit right with the richest person in the universe, who responded by calling the representative an “evil liar,” a “robber,” and an “insider trader.” Then he threatened to sue Khanna, agreed that he should be arrested, and told his 240 million X followers that “Ro the Robber should be in prison!!” That all happened on Monday, but apparently sleeping on it didn’t change Musk’s feelings about the situation. On Tuesday he shared a post encouraging him to “take Ro ‘the Robber’ for every penny that he has”

He later retweeted Rand Paul’s false claim that USAID funded COVID, adding “USAID money killed millions” — a baseless assertion backed by nothing, in direct contrast to the peer-reviewed Lancet study he’s threatening to sue Khanna over.

The whole thing is ridiculously censorial — Musk is trying to get Khanna to shut up and prevent Congress from examining the actual impact of his (brief, but very eventful) leadership of DOGE. Turns out Musk doesn’t like either free speech or government transparency when it comes to his own actions.

There’s an extra layer of irony in who, exactly, Musk has chosen to go after. When Khanna was first elected to Congress a decade ago, he was Silicon Valley’s guy — backed by a massive war chest of tech billionaire money. Now those same circles are cheering Musk on to “take every penny” from him, because Khanna has since suggested the ultra-rich might pay marginally more in taxes and that Congress look into what DOGE actually did. As recently as last year, when Musk and Trump had a brief falling out, Khanna was even among those who explored whether Musk might shift his support toward Democrats — that’s how vast Musk’s gravitational pull had become over the entire ecosystem, critics included. Now that pull is being used to threaten financial ruin over a Congressional Representative citing a peer-reviewed journal.

It remains a complete travesty that there’s been no accountability, no responsibility, and no full accounting of just how much damage Musk did in his few months taking a chainsaw to large parts of the federal government, despite having zero congressional authority to do any of that.

The fact that he’s now threatening to abuse the courts to “take every penny” from Khanna for daring to suggest Congress should actually do its job and figure out what the fuck happened in the Executive Branch last year should (not for the first time) put to rest the idea that Musk has ever been a free speech supporter. He’s petty, vindictive and censorial, and not above using his extreme wealth to punish those who point out he’s an emperor with no clothes.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, deaths, defamation, doge, elon musk, free speech, free speech absolutism, ro khanna, usaid