Fact-checking Elon Musk's claims in the Oval Office
2025-02-13
Category: news

Elon Musk has made a number of exaggerated or unevidenced claims during an Oval Office event alongside President Donald Trump.The billionaire, who was making his first major media appearance since beginning his role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), said his team was seeking to improve transparency in government.But he provided no evidence when making sweeping statements about corruption in government agencies and also defended false allegations he had spread about US funds being used to send condoms to Gaza.BBC Verify has examined these claims made by Musk.
Sending condoms to Gaza?
Musk was challenged by a reporter about a recent White House claim, which he has repeated, that it had stopped $50m (£40.2m) worth of condoms being sent to the Gaza Strip.The reporter asked whether the condoms were actually due to be sent to Gaza Province in Mozambique.Musk appeared to concede that could be the case, and responded: "I'm not sure we should be sending $50m dollars on condoms anywhere… if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like, OK that's not as bad, but still you know why are we doing that?"Several posts on X have highlighted a US commitment to fund an HIV-prevention programme in Gaza, Mozambique.US government records show that an American-funded scheme for Gaza, Mozambique was awarded $83.5m for "prevention, care, support and treatment interventions within HIV and TB facilities and communities" for a programme running until September 2026.BBC Verify contacted the aid agency that granted the funding - the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) - who told us that no money has been used to procure condoms.Elon Musk denies 'hostile takeover' of government in surprise White House appearanceWatch: Musk defends government cuts in surprise White House appearanceTrump defends Musk and says Doge will look at military spendingThe US State Department told us two $50m donations due to be sent to the Gaza Strip via the International Medical Corps had been stopped, which it claimed included contraceptives such as condoms.But responding to the claims, the charity said it wasn't aware of any future US funding for condoms or any other contraceptives for Gaza.They also said none of the funds they'd received from the US government since October 2023 had been used to procure or distribute condoms within the Gaza Strip.The US has, in the past, provided contraceptives to countries around the world as part of family planning programmes.In 2023 fiscal year (1 October - 30 September) $60.8m was sent abroad for contraceptives - with about $7m of that for condoms - according to a USAID report. None of this was listed for Gaza in the Middle East. $5.4m of contraceptives were listed for Mozambique, but none of this was for condoms.These contraceptive programmes existed under Trump's previous administration as well. During the 2019 fiscal year, for example, about $40m was spent sending contraceptives abroad, according to another USAID report.
'The woman that walked away with $30m'?
Although he did not mention her by name, Elon Musk appeared to reference former USAID administrator Samantha Power's alleged net worth.President Trump asked Musk to "mention some of the things that your team has found some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about 30 million."There have been claims on social media about Power's net worth increasing to this amount during her time at USAID.One post claims: "Ex-USAID chief Samantha Power's net worth skyrockets - from $6.7m to $30m on a $180k salary… Where did the extra $23.3m come from? And all of this in just 3 years!"Musk responded to another post on X about Power's work at USAID, asking "how did she accumulate wealth that is 100 times her after tax salary?"
Musk responded to Trump's prompt in the Oval Office by saying: "There are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is, you know what happened to USAID."Maybe they're very good at investing… I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at the taxpayer expense."Power's detractors have not provided any evidence whatsoever of a sudden increase in her wealth or that she benefited from her role at USAID beyond her salary.The claim appears to come from a website called Inside Biden's Basement, which estimated that Samantha Power was worth between $10m and $30m.There is no breakdown of the figure or methodology but it does include three of Power's government ethics disclosure forms from 2021-22.These forms show Power's income from various sources, including her teaching salary, investments, payments for speaking engagements and book royalties.Most of those figures are published in a range, such as shares in a particular company being worth between $15,000 and $50,000 or a bank account containing between $1m and $5m. As such, the range of results returned when estimating Power's wealth are wide.BBC Verify added up the income and investments from the form that Power submitted before she was sworn in as administrator in 2021, in which her wealth and income come out at between about $9m and $22m.The most recent disclosure form available on the government website gives her accounts for 2023 and is problematic because it gives one account containing "over $1m" without stating an upper limit. If you take that as being between $1m and $5m in line with her other entries, you get an overall range of $9m to $25m.In line with the filing rules, the 2021 figure does include her $461,167 salary from her previous job at Harvard, while the latest figures do not include her $183,100 salary from USAID.So from her published accounts, it seems that she was pretty wealthy before she started working at USAID and that has not changed a great deal, although that is working within very broad ranges.BBC Verify approached Samantha Power for comment via her official website.
Social security payments for 150-year-olds?
Social security provides a base income for people in the US who are either retired or can't work because of a disability. It covers about 67 million Americans.Regarding the programme, Musk said: "There's crazy things… cross re-examination of Social Security, and we've got people in there that are 150 years old." He did not provide evidence of this.BBC Verify has been unable to find specific evidence for the claim - although we don't have access to all the US social security data that Musk has been granted."I think they're probably dead… and then there's a whole bunch of social security payments where there's no identifying information," Musk added.There have been previous reports which have identified tens of billions of dollars of fraud in social security payments - but we have found no specific evidence of 150-year-olds claiming benefits.There is a 2023 report by the social security inspector general which identified about 19 million people born in 1920 or earlier who didn't have any death data on file - 44,000 of whom were still receiving social security benefits.The report was triggered by calls to better maintain claimant records, after the Social Security Administration in 2021 estimated some 24,000 people received payments by the agency after death, amounting to almost $300m.There were an estimated 101,000 people over 100 years old in 2024 across the US, according to the Pew Research Center, most of whom you would expect to be receiving social security, considering it covers retired people.
Paperwork stored down an old mine shaft?
Speaking about government inefficiencies Musk claimed only 10,000 federal employees could retire per month because the paperwork is written down manually and kept in a mine.He said: "The limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government, and the elevator breaks down sometimes, and then nobody can retire."That same day, Musk's department posted about the mine on X."Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes.  The retirement process takes multiple months."Musk is referring to Iron Mountain, a high security storage facility in Pennsylvania which holds government documents in a former limestone mine.A 2014 article by The Washington Post reported that the retirement paperwork at the facility was processed "entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper".
More recently, a 2019 audit report found that between 2014 and 2017, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) - which manages the federal retirement program -  did not meet its goal of processing most retirement applications within 60 days.The report said that one of the reasons for this was OPM's "continued reliance on paper applications and manual processing". Insufficient staffing and incomplete applications were the other reasons provided for processing delays.It did not mention problems with the storage facility or its elevators.The number of claims processed for civil service and federal employee retirements rarely exceed 10,000 per month, according to US government data. These figures also show that cases can take multiple months to process.BBC Verify has contacted the OPM about Musk's claims.
Additional reporting by Joshua Cheetham and Anthony Reuben
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