Donald Trump hasn’t taken the oath of office yet but his team has already gifted billionaire donor Elon Musk. The rest of us could be footing the bill with our lives.

Reuters has the scoop about the possible elimination of safety data, a change that would mostly benefit Musk and Tesla:

The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA.O), according to a document seen by Reuters, a move that could cripple the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems.

Musk, the world's richest person, spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars helping Trump get elected president in November. Removing the crash-disclosure provision would particularly benefit Tesla, which has reported most of the crashes – more than 1,500 – to federal safety regulators under the program. Tesla has been targeted in National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigations, including three stemming from the data.

The recommendation to kill the crash-reporting rule came from a transition team tasked with producing a 100-day strategy for automotive policy. The group called the measure a mandate for "excessive" data collection, the document seen by Reuters shows.

Reuters said it “could not determine what role, if any, Musk may have played in crafting the transition-team recommendations or the likelihood that the administration would enact them.” But it also reported that Musk said in October that he would use his position in the Trump administration to “liberalize” regulations and push for the change.

Meanwhile, the news story alone has already benefitted Tesla, i.e. billionaire Elon. The Reuters story broke Friday, December 13, 2024. Yahoo Finance reported that the same day Reuters published its report, Tesla stock “popped.” One of the anchors characterized it as a “return” on Musk’s $250 million investment in Trump's election effort.

It’s super convenient timing for such a Trump-team leak to a major news organization. The day before the stock pop, Musk, Tesla’s largest shareholder, revealed the SEC gave him 48 hours to pay a hefty fine or be charged, presumably with securities fraud, over his purchase of Twitter. “The SEC has been investigating whether Musk, or anyone else working with him, committed securities fraud in 2022 as the Tesla CEO sold shares in his car company Tesla and shored up a stake in Twitter ahead of his leveraged buyout of the social network that is now known as X,” CNBC reported.

Oh.

For the record, while Tesla whines it is unfairly targeted by requirements to report its crashes, Reuters also noted that its analysis of crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that “Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported to NHTSA through Oct. 15.” That includes a fatal accident in which an “Autopiloted Tesla hit a firetruck, killing the driver and injuring four firefighters.” Two former NHTSA employees told Reuters that the crash-reporting requirements were crucial to agency investigations and eventual recalls. “Without the data, they said, NHTSA cannot easily detect crash patterns that highlight safety problems.”

Whether Trump does away with the crash data or not, Musk has already gotten a reward. You can best believe that this is just the start of “returns on investments” to Trump’s billionaire donors.