February 22, 2025. Elon Musk had just announced that all federal employees would be required to report five things they accomplished each week or face termination.
Two days earlier, Kash Patel had been confirmed as FBI Director.
And somewhere inside the Bureau, an FBI agent sat down and typed an email requesting permission to open a criminal investigation into Elon Musk.
For posting on X.
The email has now been obtained by Fox News. It was first shared as a whistleblower disclosure to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.
And it reads like a parody of everything Americans have been told doesn’t exist inside the federal government.
The Agent Who Wanted to Prosecute a Tweet
The agent emailed a colleague in the CR-15 division — the FBI’s public corruption squad.
“I would like to recommend the opening of a criminal 58 matter on the person(s) at OPM who approved the transmission of the earlier email,” the agent wrote. “That person in conspiracy with Elon Musk… encouraged, abetted, aided, etc. thousands if not tens of thousands of government employees to violate government wide security policy.”
The “crime” in question: Musk used X to tell federal employees to report their productivity.
Not classified information. Not national security secrets. A productivity directive posted on social media.
The agent wanted to open a federal criminal investigation over it.
He Compared It to Hillary’s Email Server With a Straight Face
The most stunning line in the email:
“His use of twitter in this and other instances is conceptually similar to Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server for government business.”
Hillary Clinton stored classified government emails — including material marked at the highest levels of secrecy — on an unsecured private server in her bathroom closet. The FBI investigated, found she was “extremely careless” with classified information, and then declined to prosecute.
Elon Musk posted a productivity requirement on X.
These are “conceptually similar” in the mind of an FBI agent.
The same Bureau that couldn’t find grounds to prosecute Clinton for actual classified material on an unsecured server wanted to open a criminal case against Musk for a public social media post about work reports.
The double standard isn’t just visible. It’s radioactive.
“And No, I’m Not Kidding”
The agent closed his email with a line that belongs in a museum of bureaucratic corruption.
“Happy to write the case opening and find a prosecutor (or at least try). Alternatively, I am happy to report this to the OPM OIG or Congress.”
Then: “And no, I’m not kidding.”
He felt the need to clarify that he was serious. Because even he understood how absurd it sounded.
An FBI agent, working in the public corruption unit, earnestly requesting a criminal investigation into the richest man in the world for posting a productivity requirement on social media.
He wasn’t kidding. And that’s the terrifying part.
The Monetization Theory That Defies Logic
The agent’s legal theory gets more creative the deeper you read.
“Because he is monetized (he is a majority owner of twitter) he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization model and/or advertising revenues.”
So the crime is that Musk owns X, posted government-related content on X, and therefore technically earned money from his own post through advertising revenue.
By this logic, every government official who has ever appeared on television should be investigated for generating advertising revenue for the networks that broadcast their statements.
Every official who has posted on any social media platform with advertising should face scrutiny for “monetizing” their government work.
The theory is legally absurd. But the agent wasn’t trying to build a winning case. He was trying to open an investigation — because investigations themselves are weapons.
CR-15: The Corruption Squad That Was the Corruption
The agent sent his email to a colleague in the CR-15 division.
CR-15 was the FBI’s public corruption squad. Its stated mission: investigate corrupt public officials.
Its actual function, as later revealed: pursue political agendas.
Kash Patel dismantled CR-15 in October 2025 after Fox News reported that several Republican lawmakers’ private communications and phone calls had been tracked by former Special Counsel Jack Smith.
The squad that was supposed to fight corruption was being used to spy on Republican senators.
The Musk email fits the pattern perfectly. CR-15 wasn’t investigating corruption. It was manufacturing investigations against political opponents of the administrative state.
Musk threatened their power by demanding productivity from federal employees. So an agent in the corruption unit tried to criminalize the demand.
The Deep State Wrote Its Own Confession
For years, the phrase “deep state” was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. A fever dream of paranoid conservatives who couldn’t accept that government agencies operate in good faith.
This email is the deep state writing its own confession.
An unelected FBI agent, acting on personal political motivation, attempted to open a criminal investigation into a presidential advisor for implementing a policy the agent didn’t like.
No crime was committed. No law was broken. No classified information was compromised.
An agent simply didn’t like what Musk was doing — demanding accountability from federal employees — and tried to use the criminal justice system to stop him.
That’s not law enforcement. That’s political warfare conducted with badges and subpoena power.
Two Days After Patel Was Confirmed
The timing matters.
Patel was confirmed as FBI Director on February 20, 2025. This email was sent on February 22.
Two days.
The agent knew a new director was coming — one who had promised to clean house. And his response wasn’t to stand down. It was to accelerate. Open the investigation now, before Patel could stop it.
The urgency reveals the mindset. These weren’t career professionals following procedures. These were political operatives racing the clock to weaponize their authority before it was taken away.
The Agent Is Gone. The Squad Is Gone.
The FBI confirmed to Fox News that the investigation was never opened.
The agent who sent the email is no longer at the Bureau.
CR-15 — the public corruption squad he worked for — has been dismantled.
Kash Patel’s FBI spokesperson stated it plainly: “He has made it a top priority to expose and eliminate the deep-rooted corruption that took hold over decades at the FBI, including dismantling the disgraced CR-15 unit that was used to pursue political agendas.”
“The era of politically motivated investigations and targeting opponents is over, and it will not be tolerated on his watch.”
The agent is gone. The squad is gone. The email survives as evidence of what was happening inside America’s premier law enforcement agency.
How Many Emails Like This Were Sent That We’ll Never See?
This email was disclosed because a whistleblower shared it with Senator Grassley.
How many similar emails were sent that nobody disclosed?
How many investigation requests were filed against political opponents? How many cases were opened based on personal animosity rather than evidence? How many careers were destroyed by agents who decided their political preferences outweighed the law?
We know about this one because someone had the courage to expose it. The ones we’ll never know about are what should keep you awake at night.
Musk Demanded Productivity and They Tried to Arrest Him for It
Strip away the legal jargon and the bureaucratic language.
Elon Musk told federal employees to prove they were doing their jobs.
An FBI agent tried to open a criminal investigation to stop him.
That’s the story. That’s what was happening inside the FBI less than 48 hours after a reform-minded director was confirmed.
The agent wasn’t protecting the public. He was protecting the bureaucracy. Protecting the system that allows federal employees to coast without accountability. Protecting the comfortable arrangement where taxpayers fund salaries and nobody asks what they’re getting in return.
Musk threatened that arrangement. So an agent reached for the most powerful weapon in the federal arsenal: a criminal investigation.
It failed. The agent is gone. The squad is destroyed. And the email sits in Chuck Grassley’s files as proof of everything Americans suspected but couldn’t prove.
The deep state wasn’t a theory. It was a department. It had a name — CR-15. It had agents. It had email. And it tried to criminalize a social media post about doing your job.
Now it’s gone. And Elon Musk is still posting.