Elon Musk just went there
This weekend the courts ordered Elon Musk and his associates to cease accessing Treasury Department data, and ordered them to immediately destroy any data they’ve already downloaded. At the time I wrote that given how mentally incompetent Musk is, and how thoroughly he thinks he’s the President, it was hard to predict whether Musk would abide by the order.
Sure enough, yesterday Musk hinted on Twitter that he might indeed just ignore the court’s restraining order.It wasn’t a surprise to see Musk take this position. But then Vice President JD Vance tweeted a very similar (and arguably more forceful) sentiment about the court order – and that is notable.
Again, we don’t know what Musk will do. At this point it’s like trying to predict what a cat will do while high on catnip. But with Vance seemingly giving Musk the green light, and Trump too lost in a haze of cognitive decline to understand what’s going on, we might see Musk try to violate the court order after all.
Suffice it to say that things would get weird. Given the restraining order, the Treasury Department and its employees would be legally able to treat Musk and his henchmen like criminal trespassers if they attempt to access the data. How would law enforcement deal with such a situation?
Either way it would presumably result in Musk getting hauled into court for contempt by the judge who issued the restraining order. It’s doubtful that the Trump-controlled DOJ would prosecute Musk for anything. But with numerous state Attorneys General already asserting jurisdiction and bringing civil cases against Musk over the hacking, it wouldn’t be a leap to see the states bring criminal charges on top of it. As we all know by now, Trump can’t pardon state level charges.
Of course this is all hypothetical for now. We don’t know what Musk will or won’t do next. He doesn’t have Trump’s dementia, but he’s every bit as mentally incompetent. If there were any sort of master plan at work here, he’d be trying to carry out these antics with as little publicity as possible, not bragging about his crimes on Twitter while he’s committing them. In any case, the more attention we continue to draw to Musk’s crime spree, the more likely it is that he will ultimately fail.
