Billionaire Elon Musk is directing candidates interested in working in his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to submit their résumés through his social media platform X, apparently granting himself and X access to what he describes as “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”

Government regulations ordinarily require official communications to be conducted and saved on government servers (remember Hillary Clinton’s private email server). It’s unclear how that would happen under this scenario or why Musk’s and Vivek Ramaswamy’s new department wouldn’t have a government email address and website.

We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE. We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s…

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) November 14, 2024

Musk also states that the positions are unpaid.

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“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero. What a great deal!”

As some have pointed out, for users to contact Musk’s DOGE account via direct message, as his post directs, and to send their résumés, they must have a “verified” account—which costs money.

This “DOGE” account has the gray checkmark, indicating it is a government-run account. The post below encourages applicants to apply by DMing the account.

Except…you can’t unless you give money to @elonmusk. Very efficient. Much profit. Many wow. https://t.co/f03BO4CpN5 pic.twitter.com/2lTbMs8u3Z

— C.J. Petersen 🏳️‍🌈 🌽 (@cjforiowa) November 14, 2024

“As usual, its another ethics conflict for Elon Musk because you can only DM and apply for the position if you become verified on X. You can only become verified by paying X. Quite efficient use of ethics and scams, isn’t it? No other avenue to apply,” observed Dr. David Weber, whose bio says he “teaches forensic accounting and fraud examination each semester at the Perdue School of Business.”

The MeidasTouch Network adds that the DOGE “account has been given a grey checkmark, verifying it as an official government account. It also only accepts resumes be DM’s, which are solely open to verified X users who pay Elon Musk. This level of corruption is staggering.”

At Slate, Nitish Pahwa also points out that it appears the Department of Government Efficiency is not an actual federal government agency, which ordinarily would require congressional approval and funding.

Pahwa writes, “there’s little clarity on just what this federal ‘partnership’ will formally resemble, how the DOGE entity itself will operate (nonprofit? Obnoxious account on X? Private corporation? Federal advisory committee? Dogecoin-branded merch table? Mirror of an already extant OMB office? Blockchain ledger?), and how the powers Musk and Ramaswamy think they’ll have square with what they’ll actually have.”

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This situation has led some to question why, if DOGE is not a government agency, X has granted it a gray checkmark. X says gray checkmarks are for “government or multilateral” organizations.

The high tech and startup news site TechCrunch last month reported X had “updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party ‘collaborators’ to train their AI models on X data, unless users opt out. While X owner Elon Musk trained xAI’s Grok AI chatbot on X user data, leading to an investigation by the EU’s lead privacy regulator, the company hadn’t yet amended its policy to indicate its data may also be used by third parties.”

“The addition to the policy implies that X, like Reddit and various media organizations, is looking into licensing data to AI companies as a potential new revenue stream.”

The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell remarked, “New resume audit study just dropped.”

Responding to Musk’s post Professor of Law Richard Painter, the well-known former Bush White House chief ethics lawyer asked, “Does DOGE need an ethics lawyer?”

See the social media posts above or at this link.

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An attorney representing a woman who claims Matt Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17 is urging the House Ethics Committee to release its report on the former Florida Republican lawmaker who just became President Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General.

Gaetz, who suddenly resigned Wednesday, immediately after Trump announced his intention to nominate him to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer, had been under investigation for years by the House Ethics Committee for allegations that he “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct.”

The sexual misconduct claim is widely believed to be the allegation of sex with a minor, which the U.S. Dept. of Justice had been investigating, but no charges were ever filed. DOJ reportedly also had been investigating Gaetz for the possibility of sex trafficking of underaged girls, according to The Associated Press.

“Among those who have given testimony to the House Ethics Committee is a woman who says she had sex with Gaetz at a 2017 party shortly after he was elected to Congress. The woman was 17 at the time,” CBS News reports.

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Attorney John Clune, who represents that woman, wrote: “Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”

The Ethics Committee was scheduled to vote Friday on whether to release its completed report, as Punchbowl News first reported.

“Multiple sources [in June] told CBS News that four women had informed the House Ethics Committee that they had been paid to go to parties that included sex and drugs, and that Gaetz had also attended. The committee has Gaetz’s Venmo transactions that allegedly show payments for the women,” CBS adds.

The Ethics Committee’s practice generally is to close any investigations once the subject of an investigation is no longer a member of Congress.

However, this is not always the case.

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“There is precedent in Congress on the Senate side for an ethics committee report to become public after a member resigns from Congress, however. In 2011, this happened when Sen. John Ensign of Nevada resigned amid allegations that he tried to hide an extramarital affair,” CBS noted.

There is a bipartisan call on the Senate side to see the Gaetz report.

“Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, called on the House Ethics panel to preserve and share the report, as well as ‘all relevant documentation’ on Gaetz with his committee.”

“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” Durbin said in a statement Thursday. “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people. Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next attorney general of the United States and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.”

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) “told reporters Thursday morning he ‘absolutely’ wants to see the House Ethics Committee’s report on Gaetz.”

“I think there should not be any limitation on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated,” Cornyn said.

Last year, ABC News reported, “Gaetz’s former close friend Joel Greenberg, who sources said agreed to cooperate in the federal probe into Gaetz, was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to crimes including sex trafficking of a minor and introducing her to other ‘adult men’ who also had sex with her when she was underage. Greenberg agreed to provide ‘substantial assistance’ to prosecutors as part of their ongoing investigation.”

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Pete Hegseth, the host of the weekend edition of “Fox & Friends,” is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense—one of the most powerful positions not only in the country but also in the world. Critics, and even some Republican U.S. Senators, are shocked by the choice, with some pointing to what they see as his lack of qualifications and his apparent far-right Christian nationalist ties, as causes for concern.

The London-based nonprofit, Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), issued a statement on “Hegseth’s associations with Christian nationalist movements,” and warned of his “ties to extreme Christian theologies … [that] have raised alarms about the direction of Trump’s potential administration.”

The current U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is a retired four-star U.S. Army General. He has served as commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), Army Vice Chief of Staff, Commander of United States Forces – Iraq, and Director of the Joint Staff. He is a decorated soldier, awarded for valor and distinguished service. Austin graduated from West Point in 1975 and served in the U.S. Armed Forces until his retirement in 2016.

Hegseth has served in the Minnesota Army National Guard since 2003. He holds the rank of Major, has received several awards, and has served at Guantánamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

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One day before Joe Biden was sworn into office as America’s 46th President, The Associated Press reported, “Twelve U.S. National Guard members have been removed from securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting by the FBI, including two who made extremist statements in posts or texts about the … event, Pentagon officials said.”

“Two other U.S. officials told The Associated Press that all 12 were found to have ties with right-wing militia groups or posted extremist views online,” the report noted. “The officials told the AP they had all been removed because of ‘security liabilities.’”

Jim LaPorta, an award-winning journalist who shared the byline on the AP story, is now a verification producer with CBS News Confirmed. He served two tours in Afghanistan and often writes about the U.S. Military and military veterans.

Last week, well before the SecDef nomination, LaPorta posted video of Hegseth to the social media site X and wrote: “Interesting. Couple of years ago, I had a scoop which the Pentagon later confirmed that Twelve U.S. National Guard members were removed from securing then President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting. Turns out one of them was @PeteHegseth.”

In the video, Hegseth at least partially confirms why he was removed from Biden’s inauguration duty.

Interesting. Couple of years ago, I had a scoop which the Pentagon later confirmed that Twelve U.S. National Guard members were removed from securing then President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after vetting. Turns out one of them was @PeteHegseth https://t.co/0lSzyOjzzm pic.twitter.com/QcQQmtUJJ1

— Jim LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) November 7, 2024

“I was deemed an extremist because of a tattoo, by my National Guard unit in Washington, D.C. And my orders were revoked to guard the Biden inauguration,” Hegseth says in the video. “Jerusalem Cross tattoo, which is just a Christian symbol … got me disinvited.”

Religion scholar Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies, says Hegseth’s tattoo is not just a Christian symbol.

“Hegseth’s a prominent Fox News personality & veterans advocate, but he also has strong ties to the Christian far right,” Taylor writes at the start of a lengthy thread, posting a photo of Hegseth with his tattoos exposed — and he notes that there are not one but two` Christian tattoos.

Yesterday Trump announced he’s nominating Pete Hegseth as his Secretary of Defense.

Hegseth’s a prominent Fox News personality & veterans advocate, but he also has strong ties to the Christian far right that I’ve not seen fully exposed yet.

Here’s a thread w/ receipts… 1/ pic.twitter.com/FdnhMZx4nx

— Matthew D. Taylor (@TaylorMatthewD) November 13, 2024

“Hegseth has 2 Crusader tattoos: a Jerusalem Cross, the symbol of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem on his chest,” which he showed in the video, “& ‘Deus Vult’ the Crusaders’ theological cri de coeur (‘God wills it’) on his bicep. ‘Deus Vult’ means God mandated Crusaders’ violence,” Taylor writes.

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He also points to a Newsweek article focusing on Hegseth being removed from the Biden inauguration. It also delves into his cross tattoo.

“In recent years some right-wing nationalist groups have adopted Crusader imagery, including depictions of Templar Knights and the Crusader slogan Deus vult, Latin for ‘God wills it.'”

At The Bulwark, Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque on Thursday report: “Donald Trump’s potential secretary of defense hasn’t been straightforward about the violent symbolism of his ink.”

They explain there are many tattoos, which they say are “a veritable checklist of today’s Christian nationalist folklore.”

Brockschmidt and Lecaque write from experience. Brockschmidt’s bio reads: “Journalist, author and trained historian writing about right-wing reactionary movements in the US and Europe, with a focus on the Religious Right and White Christian nationalism.” And Lecaque’s says he is “an associate professor of history at Grand View University, studies religious violence and apocalypticism.”

“Hegseth insinuates that he was discriminated against for having this ‘religious’ image on his body,” they write. “But the symbol is not only religious: It has always carried a political valence. The Jerusalem Cross was used as the emblem of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the late thirteenth century onwards. You may have seen it in Ridley Scott’s The Kingdom of Heaven (2005). It has made its way into a variety of contemporary far-right Templar myths. All this is left unmentioned by Hegseth.”

“And it’s far from the only ideologically charged tattoo on Trump’s SecDef nominee,” they add. “Hegseth’s right arm is covered from top to bottom, and most of the images draw from Revolution-era propaganda primarily associated nowadays with the ‘Patriot’ rhetoric of militia movements and QAnon. Three of these are clearly visible in the cover photo for one of his books, American Crusade: (1) the year 1775 in Roman numerals, (2) ‘We the People’ in a stylized colonial script, and (3) an American flag with a modified M-4 superimposed over the lower bars.”

“He also has Ben Franklin’s famous ‘Join or Die’ cartoon—the chopped-up snake representing the fate of the non-unified colonies—on the underside of his forearm. On his shoulder he has the insignia of the 187th Infantry Regiment in which he served; his elbow is decorated with a circle of stars and the crook of his arm features a pair of crossed muskets.”

They add that Hegseth also has “tattoos that have made the work of historians of the Crusades depressingly relevant to contemporary politics again: a sword embedded in a cross on Hegseth’s inner forearm—it represents Matthew 10:34, the verse wherein Christ says, ‘I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’—and, most disturbing of all, a gothic inscription on his bicep: ‘Deus Vult.'”

They offer a deeper explanation of the “Deus Vultures” tattoo.

“‘Deus Vult’ has never been interpreted as a call for spiritual combat—for reflection and prayer. It has always been understood as a call for violent action, for blood. This interpretation remains consistent in its widespread adoption by the Christian far right around the world, including by some who marched on the Capitol on January 6th, and one who perpetrated shocking white supremacist violence against Muslims in New Zealand.”

They say Hegseth’s tattoos provide “a veritable checklist of today’s Christian nationalist folklore. Among many who espouse a union of church and state, gun tattoos such as Hegseth’s amount to a kind of spiritual kitsch, a younger and more radical generation’s version of putting a framed print of Albrecht Dürer’s study of praying hands on the dining room wall. The iconography of weaponry is ubiquitous: Hegseth has used his Instagram profile to advertise silencers, ammunition, and soaps shaped like grenades.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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