President Trump and Elon Musk illegally revoked more than $80 million in funds from New York City bank accounts after Musk threatened to claw back FEMA funds used to house migrants in “luxury hotels,” the city’s fiscal watchdog Brad Lander said Wednesday.
The city received a payment of $80.5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency funding Shelter and Services Program on Feb. 4. This morning, Lander’s team discovered that that entire transaction had just been reversed Tuesday afternoon.
The FEMA money was approved by Congress in 2023 to be distributed to the city for migrant shelters and other services.
“This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home,” Lander said in a statement.
This comes after Musk said on social media Monday the administration was seeking to force the city to return a payment of $59 million that the billionaire incorrectly said the city was using to pay for migrants to stay in “luxury hotels.”
The Trump administration fired four FEMA employees involved in doling out payments to New York City, including the agency’s chief financial officer, “for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make egregious payments,” according to a release.
The Department of Government Efficiency, the task force Trump tapped Musk to lead, discovered the disbursement, Musk said. Musk said last week’s payment was in “gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” appearing to refer to a January order directing Homeland Security to pause distribution of federal funding to nongovernmental organizations providing services to migrants.
“New York City cannot take this lying down. I call on the Mayor to immediately pursue legal action to ensure the tens of millions of dollars stolen by Trump and DOGE are rightfully returned. If instead Mayor Adams continues to be President Trump’s pawn, my Office will request to work in partnership with the New York City Law Department to pursue aggressive legal action.”
Adams, for his part, has said he will not publicly criticize Trump or his administration. Instead, he has said he’ll take his concerns to Trump in private. Earlier that same day, Adams convened a meeting with his own top officials to urge them to not speak badly about the president in public, saying that if they were to do so, it could risk federal funding.
Later that same day, Trump’s Department of Justice ordered the prosecutors in Adams’ case to drop the charges — in part arguing Adams must be free of the burden of his corruption indictment to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda in the city.