"For years, SpaceX workers responsible for upholding disclosure rules grudgingly allowed Mr. Musk to disregard many of the reporting procedures, as they did not want to lose their jobs, the people with knowledge of the company said. But the issue has reached a tipping point as Mr. Musk’s influence is set to escalate."

That's the mistake a lot of people make. It's not reaching the tipping point - it's way past beyond that. Musk played the system perfectly. A lot of instititions have failed completly allowing him small breaches of law, which snowballed to what we're seeing now. SEC is a prime example - there are some blantant examples where Musk breached law (ex. him accumulating the stake in Twitter, without disclosing it) and SEC did absolutely nothing. It's become such a joke that he's comfortable tweeting something like SEC = "... Elon's ...". Talk about tipping point...

People, including Musk, love to complain about regulation. Regulations are nearly always put in place when somebody has violated something so egregiously that they are forced to do something. Until that happens, the regulators can't act. And when they're forced to act, it's often more onerous than it would have been if they'd been able to stop the problem earlier.

Biden admin waited too late to look into this. Its over. Musk is about to break all sorts of rules until even republicans can’t tolerate it.

It's significant leverage for Trump to make Musk do or not do things. Trump intuitively knows he has this leverage now.

To what degree Trump's feeble mind can take advantage? In a battle of wits and lies, who wins? They can't really be allies without an immediate Trump pardon. How long does Musk permit it being merely dangled in front of him?

shrug