Elon Musk's role in the US government is getting even darker

Elon Musk said two very interesting and contradictory things about his government employment during a Tesla earnings call on Tuesday.

First, it suggested that he is done focusing full-time on his ad hoc role taking a chainsaw to elements of the federal government with the Department of Government Efficiency.

“Starting next month, May, my time allocation for DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said during the Tesla call.

This simple idea — that Musk could spend more time on his current businesses — was enough to spark a rebound on Wednesday in Tesla's share price, which had fallen largely due to Musk's polarizing role in the Trump administration.

But Musk hinted that he would not leave the government entirely, and probably not until 2029, when President Donald Trump's term ends.

"I'm going to have to continue to do this, I think, probably for the remainder of the president's term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we're stopping doesn't come back, which it will if it has the chance," Musk said, adding: "I think I'll continue to spend a day or two a week on government affairs for as long as the president finds it useful to me."

What exactly does this mean and what is the legal authority for Musk to stay in the White House?

Musk's role is already on the edge of what is officially permitted in Washington. The White House has said he is a "special government employee," which allows him, unlike full-time federal employees, to continue to earn money from the "like 17 jobs" he talks about having. CNN has reported that Musk is not receiving a salary for his government work.

Giving Musk broad authority to oversee DOGE was always a misapplication of the special government employee law, according to Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service.

Special government employees are supposed to “bring specialized skills and expertise that you don’t have in-house in government,” he said.

But the Trump administration, by hiring Musk and others in this way, “abused the purpose of this to bypass a lot of the conflict issues, the clearance issues that you would have in a permanent, full-time employee.”

"There is no way Elon Musk has control over the kinds of decision-making he makes on issues that have such hard-hitting relevance to his private financial interests," Stier said.

Instead of a successful efficiency operation, Stier argued that the DOGE effort has been futile. He argued that laying off IRS employees at tax time will cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue this year — more than the entire federal payroll.

DOGE has posted cost-cutting claims on a website, but the numbers have been difficult to verify. Musk has previously said he could achieve $1 trillion in savings, but that doesn't seem to have happened. And the real impact on government is still unknown.

“I don't think we understand the full contours yet, because it's been an incredibly opaque operation,” Stier said.

There are rules for special government employees. Most importantly, they are only allowed to work for the US government for 130 days in a 365-day period.

It's not clear whether Musk's first day was Inauguration Day on January 20 or later. His position as a special government employee — not a volunteer, but not an official government employee — was announced in early February.

If he technically leaves government service at the end of May, that would be 130 days after Jan. 20, although the reference to “special government employees” in U.S. code suggests they can serve their 130 days intermittently. But Musk didn’t specifically say he was leaving government service. Instead, he said he would continue to contribute a portion of his time each week to DOGE and the government well beyond May.

Stier said he wouldn't be surprised if the White House bypassed rules to keep Musk's advice since the law says he should no longer have an official role.

“I don't think they followed the rules in the way they have so far,” Stier said, so they probably won't follow them in the future.

The White House declined to comment on CNN's request for more information about what Musk's role might be after the 130-day limit for special government employees.

There is some irony in the flexibility Trump is granting Musk, as the administration’s effort to shrink the federal workforce was built on removing flexibility. Workers who had been working from home were asked to return to the office. Trump also complained about government employees who had jobs outside the government in addition to their government jobs, although he provided no evidence.

Special government employees are not exactly full-time government employees, although they are expected to adhere to ethics rules for government employees and file financial disclosures.

They may or may not be paid, but unlike other government employees, there are no restrictions on their outside-government income as there are for some other government employees, according to a summary from the Office of Government Ethics.

Plus, the Justice Department has argued in the past that SGEs are subject to the emoluments clause, meaning they cannot receive payments from foreign governments. If Musk has filed a required financial disclosure, it has not been made public, although CNN has documented many ways in which his business interests have been disrupted by his government shutdown.

Trump has previously acknowledged that Musk would leave his administration this year, but said that DOGE's work will continue.

“There will come a point where he will have to leave and when he does, the secretaries will take total responsibility and DOGE will remain active,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One in early April. “We have a lot of smart people. A lot of those people I believe will go into the agency and they will work on it from the inside.”

Musk is one of many Trump administration officials with a lot of work to do. The head of the Office of Government Ethics, the government agency that can oversee such potential conflicts of interest for individual government employees, was fired by Trump shortly after he took office. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is currently acting director of the ethics office in addition to his day-to-day job managing Trump’s trade negotiations.