Private bodyguards for Elon Musk were deputized as federal agents in February last year despite not meeting the minimum requirements for training and experience, new documents show.
In internal emails seen by The Independent, senior U.S. Marshals Service official Rich Kelly agreed to exempt members of Musk’s security detail from the usual rules while the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was serving as head of DOGE.
Specifically, Kelly said, he was waiving a requirement that deputies complete a “basic law enforcement training program”, as well as a requirement that they “possess at least one year of law enforcement experience” with an agency that has general powers of arrest.
The emails were released through a Freedom of Information Act request by the progressive campaign group Democracy Forward, which shared them with The Independent. They were first reported by NBC News.
Democracy Forward called the exemption for Musk’s bodyguards “irregular and unprecedented”, describing it as a sign of the Trump administration’s “politicization” of the USMS.
Elon Musk, seen here surrounded by security guards after leaving a courtroom in San Francisco in January 2023, often said while at DOGE that he needed a lot of bodyguards because he didn’t ‘have a death wish’ (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Reports first emerged that Musk’s security team had been deputized back in February 2025, when Musk was serving as the head of DOGE and busily demolishing government-funded research and foreign aid programs.
In a memo dated February 7, 2025, Kelly wrote that “in light of significant and credible threats”, the USMS had received a request to deputize a number of people to “provide protection for the special government employee to whom [sic] is the head of DOGE.”
While it did not name Musk, other emails did — contradicting the Trump administration’s courtroom denials during that period that Musk was in charge of the budget-slashing agency.
DOGE was disbanded in November last year. Musk shortly after Trump’s election said he had a mandate to ‘delete the mountain’ of government regulations. He made undoing government regulations and remaking the government with AI two key tenets of DOGE, in addition to eliminating federal government jobs.
As Trump embarked on his first year back in the White House, Musk was brought in as head of the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’, mounting a campaign to slash the federal budget (Getty Images)
Kelly’s memo noted that the deputized bodyguards would need to carry guns and travel both domestically and internationally, but would not have general authority to arrest people.
Kelly recommended that they be deputized for two years, with their powers “valid only in furtherance” of protecting Musk. It’s not clear whether they still have those powers.
The disclosure sheds further light, and raises more questions, about how Musk’s brief tenure as a special government employee blurred the lines between private business and the federal government.
During that time Musk remained the active CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, the latter of which makes much of its money from U.S. government contracts.
Democracy Forward’s CEO Skye Perryman said: “These documents — uncovered after months of work by our team — underscore the lawlessness with which Elon Musk was allowed to run around Washington, wreaking havoc and abusing government resources.”
The USMS and Elon Musk did not respond to requests for comment. The Independent has also reached out to the White House for comment.
