Elon Musk, the billionaire leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), incorrectly claimed that former White House ethics czar and CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen is running a “crime family.” This claim was made subsequent to Musk’s dissemination of misinformation regarding a woman bearing the same last name as Eisen but possessing no familial ties to him.
The incident occurred on Thursday, February 27, 2025, when Musk erroneously shared a post on X that identified Tamar Eisen, an employee at the nonprofit National Democratic Institute (NDI), as Norm Eisen’s daughter.
Musk’s post wrongly accused senior Eisen of being “the mastermind behind a slew of lawsuits” aimed at hindering DOGE’s attempts to slash funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The post falsely claimed that Tamar Eisen had been working as a Program Officer for the NDI’s Gender, Women, and Democracy team for nearly three years.
In response to the post, Musk referred to the supposed Eisen family as a “crime family.”
However, a source who spoke to The Daily Beast clarified that there is no familial link between the two Eisens. This incident marks yet another instance of Musk disseminating unverified information to his large following on the platform he controls.
Norm Eisen, the founder of the State Democracy Defenders Fund, has been instrumental in multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration as DOGE strives to reduce the size of the federal government. His organization works to defend democracy in the U.S. by legally opposing changes to election administration and procedures.
“Every time Trump and Musk flood the zone, we do two cases,” Eisen commented to The New Republic. “It’s called rule of law shock and awe.”
The State Democracy Defenders Fund is a nonpartisan organization led by a team of experts, including Eisen, who served as an ambassador during the Obama administration. The group’s operations include filing amicus briefs in election-related court cases and publishing op-eds in various media outlets.
Musk’s incorrect allegation against Eisen follows another case of misplaced identity involving him. Building America’s Future, a political action group funded by Musk, recently launched an attack ad against Dane County Judge Susan M. Crawford, the liberal candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
The ad, intended to back conservative candidate Brad Schimel, featured a photograph of the wrong Susan Crawford. Instead of using an image of candidate Susan M. Crawford, the ad showed a picture of Susan P. Crawford, a professor at Harvard Law School.
A spokesperson for Judge Crawford’s campaign denounced the ad as a “fraud from start to finish,” stating that Musk’s group was “struggling to get the facts right.”
The image used in the ad appears to be the same photograph found on Susan P. Crawford’s Wikipedia page. The Schimel campaign was not directly responsible for the ad, though the mistake has cast a shadow on Crawford’s opposition.
Musk’s support for the Trump administration, primarily through his leadership of DOGE, has sparked controversy as the government agency seeks to reduce federal spending drastically. Eisen’s lawsuits specifically target these plans to slash USAID funding.
Public service unions have teamed up with the State Democracy Defenders Fund to combat what they categorize as “unlawful, mass federal firings” resulting from DOGE’s initiatives to downsize the federal government.
These dual cases of mistaken identity highlight increasing worries about the spread of misinformation by influential figures with wide social media influence. In both instances, Musk has propagated or financed content containing false information about individuals who oppose his political associates or business interests.
As of Friday, February 28, Musk had not yet corrected his false claim about Norm and Tamar Eisen. His post referring to them as a “crime family” remained visible on his X platform to his more than 190 million followers.
