Elon Musk Calls Biden '100% Traitorous' Over Sale of Trump Wall Materials

US billionaire Elon Musk, the head of Donald Trump's "Department of Government Efficiency" appointed by the former president in 2021, accused outgoing US President Joe Biden of "treason" on January 2 on the social media platform X.

Musk made the accusation while commenting on a post from a user who claimed that Biden's administration was not trying to secure the border. "They are intentionally opening the border. It is treason."

Musk retweeted the post and called Biden's administration "100% treasonous."

The X user's post read that Biden's administration is selling the materials of the wall at the US-Mexico border with a starting price of only as low as $5 and removing the border fence. "It is time to hold them accountable."

The post was accompanied by a screenshot of an auction website showing that some steel stored at the Pinal County Airport in Arizona was sold with a starting price of $5 per piece.

Arizona is one of the busiest illegal entry points into the US from Mexico. So during his previous administration, Trump, who was sworn in as the 45th US president on January 20, 2017, built a border wall in Arizona to block the flow of illegal immigrants into the country. But the project was left unfinished due to the objections of Democrats, led by Biden.

The website no longer features the steel for sale, but according to the website's transaction history, there were three transactions.

At the beginning of last December, right before Trump's return to the presidency, the US conservative news outlet the Daily Wire reported that Biden's administration was auctioning off the materials used to build the border wall.

The outlet obtained a video from an agent of the US Border Patrol, showing that a truck was towing unused steel materials for the border wall from a checkpoint in Arizona.

The agent said that the materials being removed mainly came from three border checkpoints. Based on his estimation, the material being towed away each day alone was enough to build up to a half-mile stretch of border wall, and he believed that the Biden administration wanted to dispose of the materials by Christmas 2024.

Subsequently, the US news outlet the Hill reported, citing a statement from Stephen Chang, the director of communications for the Trump transition team, that Trump had filed a request with a Texas-based court asking for an emergency order to stop the "fast-selling" auction of the steel and investigate the Biden administration's actions. The court eventually issued a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the Biden administration from disposing of the materials.

The Biden administration announced the same day that it had stopped the sale of border wall materials and would not sell any additional materials before Trump's inauguration next month.

Trump expressed approval of the move on social media, saying in a post that he would build the border wall back.

Last March, the US Department of Homeland Security submitted a plan on how to handle the materials for the border wall construction, including allowing the transfer of materials to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as well as to states and prioritizing projects on the country's southwestern border. And the US Congress required that each state receiving the materials must use them to maintain the current border barriers.

The homeland security department said that the CBP, the states of Texas and California had received more than 60 percent of the materials through the "Reuse, Transfer, and Donation Process."

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick revealed in an interview with Fox News on December 13 that Texas purchased $12 million worth of materials at a summer auction that could build about four miles of border wall.

The remaining 40 percent of the materials were sold to the government and military surplus website GovPlanet in June last year. The company moved the materials to Arizona in December and listed them on its website for auction. The website also auctioned off other materials for the wall construction at the end of 2023.

On December 13, Patrick said the surface of the materials being auctioned were covered with concrete and rust and there might be a couple of pieces that could still be used, but it was not worth transporting them from Arizona to Texas. On December 18, Patrick said there were some wall materials included in the auction that he had not seen before and Texas would be interested in purchasing them if they were usable.

Patrick said that GovPlanet had assured Texas officials that the state would be the first to be contacted when the wall materials were auctioned again.

Patrick also said that if the state purchased more wall materials, it would donate the materials to the US government after Trump officially takes office.

According to data released by the US Department of Homeland Security, the number of illegal entries into the US reached a record of 10.1 million from 2021 to 2023. During Trump's four-year term in office, the number of illegal immigrants decreased 3.4 times compared to that, reaching 2.3 million.