Politicians are pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to answer questions about a government contract for armored Teslas that never existed. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-NY) and Congressman Gregory Meeks (D-NY) both sent letters to Rubio last week with a detailed list of questions they want the Secretary to answer.
The letters concern a Biden-era State Department contract for armored Teslas that, if fulfilled, would have enriched the Elon Musk-owned company to the tune of $400 million. “The decision to consider purchasing Tesla vehicles for this purpose highlights the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in Mr. Musk’s dual roles as the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, Inc. and the practical head of the Department of Government Efficiency,” Blumenthals’s letter said.
Blumenthal is a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the chairman of its Investigations subcommittee. His letter is dated March 3 and he’s demanding answers from Rubio by today.
Meeks is a ranking member of the House’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. He sent his letter on March 7 and is demanding his answers no later than March 14. “We write to you to request answers and documentation to respond to a series of media reports that the Department of State and Elon Musk intended to engage in unlawful procurement activities that would constitute a serious violation of federal procurement laws, and in doing so planned to unlawfully enrich Mr. Musk,” Meeks said in his letter.
The saga of the armored Teslas began last month when Drop Site News uncovered a line item in a procurement forecast that called for spending $400 million on armoring Teslas. This document is not a budget, it’s a forecast put together by State that talks about money they might spend in the future.
When D.C. decides to spend money, it can take a long time. First, it puts out a Request for Information (RFI), a signal to contractors about what it wants. Then, it looks through the RFIs and, after a lengthy decision-making process, decides whether to spend the money. There’s a 2024 RFI about armoring electric vehicles here.
When I talked to the State Department about this story, they told me that the use of the word “Tesla” had been a clerical error and said that it was a Biden-era initiative that wasn’t moving forward. They’d put out the RFI, they said, and only got one response back.
Someone at State also went back to the original procurement document and changed the word “Tesla” to “electric vehicle.” In the journalism business, we call this a “stealth edit,” and it tends to make you look guilty.
The armored Teslas saga continued to blow up. At the end of February, NPR reported that it had documents that undercut State’s denials. NPR didn’t share these documents or directly quote them. According to its reporting, Biden’s State Department planned to spend about $483,000 in 2025 buying “light-duty EVs.” $483,000 is not $400 million. It is considerably less than that. NPR also didn’t say that the electric vehicles referenced in the documents would be Teslas.
Blumenthal’s letter to Rubio assumes that State is buying Teslas, though, and that it’s going all in on Cybertrucks. “This concern was exacerbated by the fact that the vehicle in question was a Tesla Cybertruck, a failed experiment of a car which has been subject to numerous recalls since its announcement, and would not reasonably be considered for this purpose absent a heavy thumb on the scale,” Blumenthal said.
NPR’s story featured several experts who have conflicting opinions about the viability of up-armored Cybertrucks as State Department vehicles. Some say it’s the perfect vehicle, others say it would be terrible. But, as best I can tell, no contract for the purchase of Cybertrucks exists or has ever existed. NPR doesn’t claim that the State Department plans t