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Seth AbramsonMarch 3, 2025 at 7:17 PM EST

(🧵) How Elon Musk betrayed America: a thread from a Musk biographer and former federal criminal investigator. Please share widely, here and elsewhere. This will be long. Author bio: sethabramson.net Latest book: sethabramson.substack.com

1/ Musk below is confessing to beginning to blame Ukraine for a war Putin started—thus working to aid Putin—at exactly the moment he began having clandestine business and geopolitical negotiations with Putin.

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4/ The beginning of the Musk-Putin conspiracy came shortly after Musk made associates aware he wanted to expand Tesla factories to Russia, suggesting he'd received the same business-related entreaties from Kremlin agents Trump got in 2013, 2015, and 2016.

5/ The Trump-Russia Scandal was never about Trump allegedly aiding in Russian _hacking or propaganda_. Though that allegation was never made—by anyone—it was all Mueller investigated. In fact, the allegation was Putin tempting US businessman to betray America via business deals. 6/ I wrote three national bestsellers about the relationship between Trump, Putin, Russia and Ukraine. (Link just for reference.) Not one fact in all 1,500+ pages of that trilogy has been refuted. Not one. What I found was that Putin was promising business deals in exchange for a “peace deal.”

7/ Putin established an MO: personally and through agents, he approached businessmen he felt could influence policy and offered business deals—for them to bring their businesses to Russia—if they would push his fake deal to end the hostilities in Ukraine among politicians in DC. 8/ This is why Musk subsequently lied about wanting to take Tesla to Russia, even as he pushed a so-called deal in Ukraine that was—U.S. media universally reported—identical to _everything_ the Kremlin demanded _and_ what it had passed to Trump via ex-Trump friend, fixer, and attorney Michael Cohen.

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10/ Musk’s rhetoric on Ukraine did a 180 as soon as he began speaking to Putin about geopolitics _and business_. He was compromised at that point: not a Kremlin agent, no, but a Kremlin asset (a very different concept, and well worth Googling the many differences between the concepts). See, e.g.:

11/ After this point, not only did Elon Musk exclusively push a “deal” in Ukraine the Kremlin had written, we _also_ began to see Cybertrucks end up in Russia... somehow... and Starlink technology begin to end up in Russia... somehow... and Musk pushing to end Russian sanctions.

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17/ How was so much Musk tech getting to Kremlin soldiers at a time Musk was secretly communicating with the Kremlin, turning off Starlink over Crimea (which he at first lied about), pushing a Kremlin-written “peace deal,” and going full pro-Russia MAGA? 🔗: thehill.com

18/ When a Chechen warlord alleged that Musk had arranged for him to get a Cybertruck, I knew I had to speak up as a Musk biographer. And that was when Musk and I had our second interaction on Twitter.

19/ Ramzan Kadyrov, a Chechan warlord who is a tough guy who never jokes and fully realized the importance of publicly claiming Musk was working with the Kremlin to get his tech to Russian soldiers to fight *against* U.S. allies—arguably, statutory Treason—was clear on his gift.

20/ So Musk was caught in a lie. Without accusing him of gifting the warlord the Cybertruck, I _did_ say he had the ability to _disable_ it—and that that would signal that he didn’t want Russian troops to have his products as they made war on American allies. Musk was in a bind. 21/ So a series of things then happened very quickly. Musk, who’d always read my work and throttled my feed but had never addressed me _directly_, was so rattled by my accusation that he did so—calling me a “retard”...for saying he gifted a Cybertruck to a Chechen warlord. It was a mistake by Musk. 22/ Why? Because I hadn’t accused him of gifting the Cybertruck. I’d accused him of being _unwilling_ to _remotely disable_ it. So he either had to claim he _couldn’t_ remotely disable it _or_ admit that he _could_ but had done nothing when he found out a Russian leader had his product illegally. 23/ I had put him in a bind. Which meant Putin and his leaders were in a bind. So this is how it was dealt with. First, where it began:

24/ Then, where it went next: a Russia media outlet claiming that Kadyrov lied, though he clearly had not lied.

25/ (To be clear, Kadyrov never meant the Cybertruck was a personal gift. He meant Musk wasn’t stopping/disabling Cybertrucks entering Russia.) Then Musk—who’d sworn he couldn’t remotely disable a Cybertruck and called me a slur for saying otherwise—disabled the Cybertruck, just as I knew he could.

26/ But Musk still had plausible deniability about the remote disabling, until this happened...

27/ Musk was so desperate to show that his Cybertruck—his ugly, refrigerator-like, poorly made vehicular baby—hadn’t spontaneously combusted in Las Vegas as it has elsewhere, that he revealed how much control Tesla maintains over every Cybertruck it sells or puts out.

28/ So Kadyrov had told the truth about Tesla and other Musk products appearing in Russia in a way Musk could track _but wasn’t_ (because he was secretly negotiating with Putin), but he wasn’t supposed to give up the game... a game I revealed, per Le Monde.

29/ That was why Musk got so flustered he acknowledged in public his awareness of my writings on him and called me a “retard,” an attack that birthed several news stories wondering why Musk had gotten so worked up over my writings. He was worked up because his clandestine schemes had sprung a leak. 30/ Trump-Russia collusion in the 2024 U.S. election happened in plain view—through the $290 million (a record-exploding amount) that Mr. Musk gave to the Trump operation—after two successive presidential elections in which Russian aid for Trump had been secret and controversial.

31/ Most Americans don’t know that George Soros—a progressive bogeyman Musk has made out to be a _literal supervillain_—gives ~3% the amount to Democrats that Musk gave Trump. You _can’t contemplate_ how fruitful the secret Musk-Putin alliance was for Putin... and for Mr. Trump.

32/ The upshot of all of this: angered by how Democrats dealt with the pandemic—which he felt cost him money—and wanting to take Putin up on business offers of the sort Trump tried to (before Putin yanked them back) in 2013, 2015 and 2016, Musk turned on America around 2021-2022.

33/ Yesterday Elon Musk demanded that America exit NATO. Also a _Kremlin_ demand. Yesterday Musk even demanded America exit _the United Nations_—a dream beyond _anything_ Putin could have imagined when he began courting Musk secretly earlier this decade.

34/ Musk did not turn on Ukraine, the EU, NATO—even the United Nations—organically. He was _turned_—after he began jonesing to move his businesses into Russia (partly due to pandemic issues) and after he began having clandestine contacts with Putin. From that point in, everything changed for Musk. 35/ Consider his new views: 1⃣ United States out of the UN and NATO. 2⃣ A Kremlin “peace deal.” 3⃣ No Starlink over Crimea. 4⃣ Starlink inside Russian tech. 5⃣ Teslas in Russian hands. 6⃣ A sudden turn toward Trump. 7⃣ $290M in political gifts. 8⃣ The 2024 election suddenly being “existential.” (For whom?) 36/ But this is the tip of the iceberg. He started ending old friendships. He changed so much—personality-wise—Grimes called him unrecognizable. He became distant from his kids. He went on ketamine to deal with stress and depression. And yes, it was also during this period that he _bought Twitter_!

37/ Betraying a nation that gave you everything and doing it for money—not just new factories, but the ability to set up shop in a nation where you will not be sued for gender and racial discrimination, disobeying regulations, or unethical bioengineering testing (and no COVID closures)—is stressful. 38/ It changed Musk considerably.

39/ He gained weight, he lost relationships, he became—his employees felt—suicidal. Why? Because he knew what he had become.

40/ With aid from Putin allies in Saudi Arabia, and under a false claim he wanted to reduce bots—when in reality Putin wanted Twitter as a political weapon to reelect Trump—Musk in the most deranged and haphazard and weird and deceitful way bought Twitter.

41/ As soon as he bought Twitter, it was clear bots had had nothing to do with it. In fact, bots were *allowed* to proliferate so that Musk could claim that two Putin pals—him and his Saudi backer—buying Twitter had made it *more* popular rather than less.

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43/ Musk then admitted he bought Twitter not to make it more functional—it became less—or to show government tampering (the so-called Twitter Files were a massive bust) but to “save civilization,” a canard he always uses when doing something for himself. It also echoed Kremlin propaganda about WW3.

44/ The biggest threat to world peace comes from Vladimir Putin, of course, so in a classic bit of autocratic gaslighting the Kremlin has—for twenty years now—used as fallback rhetoric the idea that anyone _who makes it mad_ is risking WWIII. Not Russia, mind you! Only its agitators are risking it. 45/ This is the equivalent of a wife-beater screaming at his victim, “WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME DO THIS?!” (As dedicated misogynists—the former also a serial sexual predator and rapist—Trump and Musk would of course not understand this analogy, as such a scream sounds fine to them.)

46/ Many Americans were mystified at how, out of nowhere, Musk not only became political, became pro-Russian, and became a different person seemingly overnight, but _also_ suddenly started claiming that if a Russian enemy became the President of the United States it could... “threaten civilization.” 47/ In writing three national bestsellers on Trump and Russia and Ukraine, I found that Putin routinely had his agents push foreign allies to say that they supported the Kremlin for the sake of “peace” and to avoid WWIII (i.e., in simpler terms, the “end of civilization”). Musk echoed this to a tee. 48/ The thing is, only a captured and compromised person would _ever_ utter such nonsense—given that it was Putin who invaded Georgia, Putin who invaded Ukraine, Putin who invaded Chechnya, Putin who pushes us ever closer to WWIII. Everyone who’s normal and uncompromised—worldwide—sees it clearly.

49/ So what changed for Musk? His clandestine business and geopolitical negotiations with Putin—_exactly_ the sort Trump had to have through _intermediaries_ because he was a politician, but that Musk could have _directly_ because he was not (and was not eligible to even be the U.S. president ever). 50/ This was genius. Putin knew if he turned a non-pol billionaire against America via venal entreaties he’d needed intermediates to bring to Trump intermediaries, he could capture America indirectly. The illegal thing would be bribing Musk, so Trump... has launched the biggest pro-Bribery war ever. 51/ Yes, PRO-Bribery. More:

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55/ Trump even hired a Musk pal and Kremlin ally, David Sacks, to be his Crypto Czar so Sacks could—in the biggest assist to the Kremlin and its allies in _literally all their history with the United States_—create a system for U.S. enemies legally bribing Musk and Trump with untraceable crypto.

56/ (Note that Sacks endorsed Trump right when Musk did, suggesting their public turns toward backing Trump were coordinated. Sacks also worked directly with Musk to get Kremlin ally J.D. Vance onto the ticket as VP.)

57/ So foreign election interference already happened. What we’re seeing now is a cleanup—retroactively creating a legal framework within which what Musk apparently did is neither Bribery nor Treason nor even political corruption, even as co-POTUS Musk sleeps near (and sometimes at) the White House.

58/ So Putin is inside the White House. Every day. He has an office there. He sleeps there. He travels on Air Force Once and Marine One. He writes Trump executive orders. He sets policy for the White House. All in the person of Elon Musk. And so, this victory for the Kremlin today _is_ its victory:

59/ And it’s all happening under our noses. Ask any Russia or Ukraine expert what the White House would be doing if Putin were co-running it with Trump through Elon Musk, and they will say: end aid to Ukraine (check); start to exit NATO (check); attack the EU (check). But also: 60/ 1⃣ Claim American aid to Ukraine is $350 billion—a Kremlin figure—not the actual $100 billion (check). 2⃣ Falsely claim America aids Ukraine more than Europe—another Kremlin lie (check). 3⃣ Falsely call Zelinskyy a dictator (Kremlin lie, check). 4⃣ Call Ukraine the aggressor (Kremlin lie, check). 61/ 5⃣ Falsely say that Russia wants peace in Ukraine and that Ukraine does _not_ (check). 6⃣ Say that the entire Trump-Russia Scandal was a hoax that Ukraine had a hand in (check). 7⃣ Falsely accuse Biden of working with Ukraine to steal the 2020 U.S. presidential election (a Kremlin lie, check). 62/ 8⃣ Call for Zelenskyy to step down, exactly as the Kremlin desperately wants (check). 9⃣ _Start_ the so-called “peace negotiations” by derangedly _conceding up front_ everything the Kremlin wants (check). 🔟 Shut off all aid to Ukraine (as of today, Mission Accomplished by Trump, Musk, and Putin). 63/ I could go on. Putin wants a rift between the United States and Canada—check. Putin wants a rift between America and a key EU ally (Denmark) over Greenland—check. Putin—said to be the world’s actual richest man—wants to bribe Trump and Musk in perpetuity via untraceable crypto. As noted, check.

64/ Even Elon Musk _stans_ have wondered why Musk is with him _every second of the day_. He travels with Trump; has an office where Trump does; sleeps where Trump does; has roughly the same itinerary; is on calls that have nothing to do with “DOGE.” The secret? See Occam’s Razor. 65/ Musk can do—and can be to Trump—what Putin cannot be: a Kremlin asset who shadows him at all times and ensures that his actions serve the glory of Russia and in all respects harm America. And it’s working. It’s working beyond Putin’s wildest dreams.

66/ So many federal employees are being fired that the U.S. government is becoming non-functional. Our alliance with Europe is dead. Our ability to stave off tens of millions of deaths in the next pandemic is approaching zero. Ukraine will get nothing from us, now. So Putin wins.

67/ And the best (i.e., the very worst) part? The Kremlin didn’t hide all this. Sure, Musk lied for years and years about not being in contact with Putin, but once their clandestine relationship was revealed, major media just dropped it. So the Kremlin just stated what it had done... uh... openly:

68/ “DOGE” is a Kremlinist attack on America. It has found no fraud and abuse; is lying about its savings; and has fired everyone in government who _actually_ looks for fraud and abuse (e.g., 18 Inspectors General) because it’s merely intended to weaken the U.S. government. It is Treason-adjacent. 69/ More:

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71/ Trump is actually spending _more_ money than Biden—even as he’s _fired_ all the people who can identify actual waste and fraud in the U.S. government. Why? Because the point of DOGE was to insert the Kremlin agenda into U.S. policy, _especially_ in killing USAID.

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73/ Why won’t U.S. corporate media explain any of this to Americans? Why does PROOF have to do it? 🔗: sethabramson.substack.com

74/ America, we’ve been betrayed. Our country is no longer our own. Elon Musk is the conduit between Vladimir Putin that Donald Trump has been looking for for a decade—and Putin for even longer—and money and policy now flows through Musk to Trump. This is, quite simply, not an American government. 75/ I do hope you’ll consider spreading this thread widely. Thank you for reading; I know this was long and that Bluesky isn’t usually used this way. I don’t intend to make a habit of it. I mostly publish at this length at PROOF. For more on all this—past, present, and future—subscribe below. /fin

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