Cuomo: Why Isn’t it Disclosed that USAID ‘Opened an Investigation’ in Relation to $2 Million Starlink Deal with Musk?

EXCERPT:

CUOMO: “So, again, I can’t think of a reason to be against efficiency efforts, but why start with USAID? And I think the answer is about who’s looking, and that’s Elon Musk. Now, the first reason is, from what I can glean, is it’s low fruit. It’s easy. USAID isn't attached to a big dog like Lockheed Martin or AT&T or Microsoft, all of whom feed the government trough way more than USAID. And those companies have had real issues with hacking and cost overruns, which I’ll tell you in a second. And then I got suspicious because this MAGA pod bros story that broke, of course, on Twitter falsely claiming  that USAID was funding Politico and other outlets with these huge amounts, they never break things that are correct. And sure enough, it wasn't correct. USAID wasn’t feeding them in these huge amounts as suggested. So why did they get fed this story and by who? Again, I think it points to Elon Musk. And so then we started doing more reporting, and guess what comes out? Did you know that Elon Musk is one of the entities benefiting from USAID? Thousands of Starlink terminals for Musk's satellite internet company provided to Ukraine. We all know the story, right? You think he gave them all? Turns out he didn’t. But it did give access to Musk's advanced internet system to the people who needed it. Now, problem with that promise is, he said only Ukraine would have access, not Russia, but now there’s evidence and allegations that Russians did have access, their military. So what did USAID do? They opened an investigation into Elon Musk this past September. You didn’t know that, did you? USAID paid Politico only 40 grand in U.S. subscriptions in 2023, 2024. You want to end them, fine., The whole, entire federal government paid Politico $8 million for subscriptions in 2024, and by the way, a lot of Republicans were on their list of subscribers. But, again, you wanna get rid of it, fine. Guess how much Musk got from USAID? After saying he was donating the terminals he didn’t donate all of them, USAID had to buy over 1,300 of them at $1,500 apiece, and the weird thing is, the terminals retail for $600. Musk made over $2 million in that deal from USAID. Why didn’t he donate all of them? Why wasn’t it disclosed that he’s being investigated in connection with that, and how can it not have something to do with why he picked them first? Shouldn’t he have to at least explain if it’s a personal beef or something he learned about the agency while dealing with them?”