An email released Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee shows a then-FBI Special Agent pushed to open a criminal investigation into Elon Musk last year after the Department of Government Efficiency asked federal employees to list five things they had accomplished the previous week.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the committee, made the email public during a hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel, presenting it as evidence that some bureau personnel had sought to investigate and sideline President Trump and his allies.
“The previous Democrat administrations under Obama and Biden conducted secret, insidious, and downright evil operations that almost took down our government,” Grassley said.
The email, dated February 22, 2025, was written by then-Special Agent Kevin Gounaud. In it, Gounaud argued that Musk, as head of DOGE, had caused federal employees to waste a large amount of official time and had violated information-security rules by asking workers to report five accomplishments from the prior week.
“I would like to recommend the opening of a criminal matter on the person(s) at OPM who approved the transmission of the earlier email,” Gounaud wrote.
“That person, in conspiracy with Elon Musk (who is reportedly an SGE), in addition to wasting a colossal amount of official time, encouraged, abetted, aided, etc. thousands if not tens of thousands of government employees to violate government-wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know.”
Gounaud, who now describes himself as a self-employed security consultant, also suggested Musk had improperly enriched himself by posting the government’s request on X, the social platform he owns, which the agent referred to in the email as Twitter. He compared Musk’s public posting of the demand to Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server as Secretary of State.
Gounaud told colleagues he would draft the paperwork to open a case, said he would be “happy” to find a prosecutor to take it, or alternatively could refer the matter to an inspector general.
“And no, I’m not kidding,” he wrote.
There is no indication a formal investigation was ever opened. According to his LinkedIn profile, Gounaud left the FBI a year after sending the email. Musk departed DOGE three months later.
The episode traces back to a directive Musk announced on X, stating that federal employees would be asked to summarize what they had accomplished the previous week.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk wrote. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The directive drew sharp reaction across the federal workforce at the time, but the newly released email shows at least one FBI agent went so far as to argue the request itself constituted a criminal conspiracy.
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