The Tesla story of $ 400 million is a fake scandal in a sea of ​​real grafts and horror

Yesterday News from the Droping site pointed a strange line In the public procurement forecast of the State Department for 2025, the state plans to spend $ 400 million on armored Teslas. It’s not too strange, the state buys a lot of vehicles and spend a lot of money Placement of armor on them. The odd thing was that someone edited the spreadsheet so didn’t mention Tesla and Then do it againS

After Drop Site News publishes the story, it became viral and hit the New York Times pages. Rachel Maddow talks about this in MSNBC. Elon Musk called her a liar and said he knew nothing about Tesla’s contract worth $ 400 million. The story has made another round after the state pinched its spreadsheet to remove the mention of Tesla.

The armored Teslass saga is important. This is a story in which many things are true at the same time and a warning about how we consume information over the next four years.

Here are the four contradictory truths. The first is that the country that buys an armored Teslas worth $ 400 million is not strange. The second is that most of us do not know how to read a federal budget document. The third is that Musk is the most rich man on the planet with billions in state treaties. The fourth is that editing a harmless budget document after someone notices that Tesla has a linear position is strange and talks a lot about how the federal government operates Trump-Musk.

Let’s start with one and two. I spent years of my life reporting waste, fraud and abuse and meetings through documents from the federal budget. The original spreadsheet of the state is not strange. It is called a public procurement forecast and is not really its official budget. This is a planning document that the law requires it to publish. This is the money that the state thinks it can spend, but it has not yet been committed. It says as much as the top of the webpage where it is indicated. Its actual budget is much longer and lives hereS

The original linear item is for “armored Tesla (production units).” It has a list of request from May 1, 2025 and the expected prize date of September 30, 2025. It is possible that Tesla may not have done the job. It seems to me that the state has Teslas, who wants to put armor and plans to issue a request for this service in May. Small business can take this contract, it does not have to be Musk’s company. Then the plan would be to award the one who has the best offer on September 30.

The state confirmed this in an email to me and said it was not entrusted with a Tesla government contract or other vehicle manufacturer. It says that the Biden administration has asked him to look at how he can add armor to electric vehicles outside the shelf and is in the early stages of the project.

The State Department has a whole unit that just deals with armor. It is called DSS Defense Equipment and Armored Division for Vehicles (DEAV). This spends a lot of money by buying armored vehicles and paying people to put armor on vehicles.

The more backing archiving of what the state told me is this request for information (RFI) that DEAV Put on April 23, 2024S RFI is one of the most stages of a state contract. This is a way for federals to ask the business how they can do something and what it can cost without actually awarding money.

This specific RFI has asked companies to tell them how they can roam an electric vehicle. “The range covers the design and development, production of prototype and test and evaluation of an electric armored vehicle (sedan, medium SUV or large SUV),” the statement said. “This requirement only covers the design and modifications of the existing commercial platform (s) and the components necessary for the sole purpose of meeting the unique needs of the Government’s program (AV).”

The State Department told me that only one company answered its RFI. “The next step in this process will be officially submitted by vehicle manufacturers to bid,” said a spokesman for the State Department. “However, the request is in detention and there are no current plans to issue.”

As the News Site News and others said, this public procurement document was changed to December 13, 2024, a few weeks before Donald Trump took office. RFI was also issued long before the election was held. The original spreadsheet also includes lines for “armored EV (not sedans)” and “armored BMW”. So it seems that this planning document is in line with other public documents and quite normal.

Now three and four.

Musk is a billionaire who makes a lot of money from contracts and edits the document after being noticed it is strange. Search for state -owned databases for Spacex and Tesla Motors Returns hundreds of contracts worth billions of contracts. He does not need $ 400 million and it is plausible that he tells the truth when he says he knew nothing about it.

After all this, it became public, someone edited the spreadsheet to remove the mention of Tesla. According to the state, this has corrected a mistake. “It was supposed to be a generic entrance to the manufacturer of electric vehicles,” a spokesman for the State Department told me. I think this is true, but I also think it is strange that they have made stealth editing without making a statement to the press beforehand. It diverge to cover the ass. Damn it is a coverage of the ass.

There will be a lot of nonsense over the next four years. Musk and Dog and Trump break the federal government and sell it for parts. Both will be enriched at the expense of taxpayers. They have been doing it for years.

But it is important to fight the battles that are worth fighting, to learn how our government works and to stick to the truth. Pouring over government spreadsheets and the processing of phantom distributions to Tesla is not productive. There is a very true graft to go around.