Last month, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission set a tight deadline of several days for demanding that Elon Musk pay a settlement or face civil charges relating to alleged securities violations during his US$44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022.
Musk broke the news himself in a social-media post: "Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?" he wrote, referring to SEC chair Gary Gensler.
He added a smiley face emoji but attached a legal letter condemning the "improperly motivated" ultimatum: "We demand to know who directed these actions — whether it was you or the White House."
An SEC spokesperson declined to comment on the incident. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The SEC is not the only investigative agency Musk has defied and accused of political harassment. The billionaire has long railed against government oversight, portraying himself as a victim of bureaucratic zealots stifling his companies' potentially life-saving innovations.
The White House will soon be occupied by Donald Trump — whom Musk spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to help elect.
Trump has already named a new SEC chair to replace Gensler, who plans to resign when Trump is inaugurated.
Musk's potential to have extraordinary clout with the new administration raises questions about the fate of federal investigations and regulatory actions affecting his business empire, of which at least 20 are ongoing, according to three sources familiar with SpaceX and Tesla operations and the companies' interaction with the US government, as well as five current and former officials who have knowledge of probes into Musk's companies.
The inquiries include examinations of the alleged securities violations; questions over the safety of Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems; potential animal-welfare violations in Neuralink's brain-chip experiments; and alleged pollution, hiring-discrimination and licensing problems at SpaceX.
Before the election, Musk posted: "I have never asked for any favours, nor has he offered me any." The Musk-related cases could languish or be dropped by Trump-appointed agency and department heads, current and former US officials said.
Trump's Department of Justice picks, for example, include lawyers who defended him in criminal and impeachment trials, and a nominee for FBI chief has repeatedly vowed to pursue Trump's enemies.
Lower-level DoJ officials could also exercise prosecutorial discretion to avoid aggressively pursuing Musk companies in light of his relationship with Trump, said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney in Detroit during the Obama administration who also worked as a federal prosecutor during the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations.
Since the election, Musk has called himself Trump's "first buddy", frequented Trump's Florida Mar-a-Lago club, shared Thanksgiving with the president-elect's family and weighed in publicly on his cabinet appointments.
Trump appointed Musk to co-lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency," a private entity advising on slashing budgets and regulations. It remains unclear what authority the role will carry.
Musk has touted his newfound influence and given examples of how he might use it.
Before the election, Musk said he would seek to use his efficiency-czar post to advance national driverless-vehicle regulations that would almost certainly benefit Tesla and eliminate "irrational" rules such as one resulting in a pollution fine against SpaceX.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials have repeatedly scrutinised Tesla for nearly a decade, at times enraging Musk.
During one 2016 call, he screamed profanities at regulators launching the first of several investigations into Tesla's Autopilot driver-assistance system after a fatal crash, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Tesla has blamed Tesla drivers in defending itself against suits and investigations over accidents involving FSD and Autopilot, saying it had warned drivers to pay attention.
A DoJ probe into whether Tesla and Musk exaggerated its vehicles' self-driving capabilities is among those where investigators have faced challenges.
Prosecutors have grappled with demonstrating that Musk and Tesla crossed a line from legal salesmanship into knowingly making false claims that misled investors and harmed consumers.
The probe had stalled before the election in part due to the legal hurdles, a person familiar with the investigation said.
* The writers are from Reuters