Elon Musk on Wednesday suggested retired Army Lt. Col Alexander Vindman “committed treason” and “will pay” after the former Trump impeachment witness accused the tech billionaire and close Trump ally of being unwittingly used by Russia.
“Vindman is on the payroll of Ukranian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X, responding to comments Vindman made in an interview about Musk’s reported conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Musk added that Vindman, who played a central role in the first impeachment of then-President Trump, “will pay the appropriate penalty.”
The Hill has reached out to Vindman’s team for comment.
Musk’s remarks vowing a penalty come as Trump has drawn scrutiny over his repeated pledges to take revenge on his perceived enemies once back in the White House. The former president’s fixation on retribution has sparked concern among critics, some of whom worry a second Trump term will lack some of the guardrails that existed in his first four years in the Oval Office.
The tech billionaire went after Vindman, who worked as a Ukraine expert on the National Security Council and later testified in Trump’s 2019 impeachment hearings, after Vindman pointedly criticized Musk in an MSNBC interview circulated online.
“Clearly Putin has a type. He likes narcissists and egomaniacs that he knows as a case officer can easily pander to manipulate, to do his dirty work,” Vindman said in the late October interview circulated online by X users this week. “Russia has been using different levers — whether that’s corruption networks, in this case, its influencers like Donald Trump, like Elon Musk, to kind of sow discord.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Musk had been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022. Putin and Musk reportedly had various conversations on personal matters, business and geopolitical tensions, while sometimes involving other high-ranking Russian officials, including Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko.
Vindman said Musk’s interactions with Putin are “particularly troubling” since the tech entrepreneur has access to state secrets and “Top Secret security clearance.”
“It’s possible that some of that is seeping through,” Vindman said, adding, “He’s [Putin] been using the richest man in the world to do his bidding. In some cases, that’s encouraging him probably to support Donald Trump.”
Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, holds contracts with the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community worth billions of dollars, while his electric vehicle company Tesla receives federal subsidies.
The tech entrepreneur has reportedly claimed he holds a U.S. security clearance as part of these federal agreements.
Vindman has remained a vocal critic of Trump, stating earlier this year Trump has “every intention” to undo American democracy if reelected.
This is not the first time Musk and Vindman have clashed on social media. The two got into a social media spat in 2022 when Vindman called Musk a “purveyor of hate and division” in response to the X platform owner labelling him “both puppet & puppeteer.”
Vindman’s twin brother, Eugene Vindman, a retired Army officer, was elected to the U.S. House earlier this month to fill the seat being vacated by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.).