Yesterday Drop Site News pointed out a strange line in the Ministry of State’s procurement forecast for 2025. The state planned to spend $ 400 million on “Armored Teslas.” This is not too strange, the state buys many vehicles and Spending a lot of money put armor on them. What was strange was that someone edited the spreadsheet so that it did not mention Tesla and Then it loaded again.

After Drop Site News published the story, it went viral and met the pages of the New York Times. Rachel Maddow talked about it at MSNBC. Elon Musk called her a liar and said he didn’t know anything about a Tesla contract of $ 400 million. The story made another round after the state adjusted its spreadsheet to remove the mention of Tesla.

The story of the armored Teslas is important. It is a story where several things are true at the same time and a warning of how we consume information over the next four years.

Here are the four contradictory truths. The first is that the state that buys $ 400 million in Armers Teslas is not strange. The second is that most of us do not know how to read a federal budgeting document. The third is that Musk is the richest man on the planet with billions in government contracts. The fourth is that the editing of an innocent budget document after someone notices “Tesla” has a line object is strange and speaks volumes about how the federal government operates during the Trump muscle’s presidency.

Let’s start with one and two. I have spent several years of my life reporting on waste, fraud and abuse and combing through federal budget documents. The state’s original spreadsheet is not strange. It is called a procurement forecast and is not actually its official budget. This is a planning document that the law requires it to be published. This is money that the state thinks they can spend but have not undertaken yet. It says as much as the top of the website where it is listed. Its actual budget is much longer and Lives here.

The original line is for “Armored Tesla (production units).” It has a recorded call date on May 1, 2025 and an expected assignment date on September 30, 2025. It is possible and even likely that Tesla would not have done this work. It looks to me as if State has Teslas that it wants to put on armor and plans to issue a request for that service in May. A small company could retrieve that contract, it will not necessarily be Musk’s company. The plan would then be to assign the one who has the best bid on September 30.

The state confirmed this in an e -mail message to me and said that no government agreement had been assigned Tesla or any other vehicle manufacturer. It said that the Biden administration had asked it to investigate how it could add armor to electric vehicles off the shelf and it was in the early stages of the project.

The Ministry of State has a whole division that is only about armor. It’s called DSS Defensive Equipment and Armored Vehicle Division (DEAV). It spends a lot of money on buying armored vehicles and paying people to put armor on vehicles.

Further backup of what the state told me is this request for information (RFI) as DEAV set out on April 23, 2024. An RFI is one of the very early stages in a government agreement. It is a way for Feds to ask companies how they can do something and what it can cost without actually assigning the cash.

This specific RFI asked for companies to tell them how they can equip an electric vehicle. “The range includes design and development, prototype manufacturing and testing and evaluation of an electric armored vehicle (then, medium -sized SUV or large SUV),” it said. “This requirement covers only design and changes to existing commercial platforms and components required for the sole purpose of meeting the government’s unique armored vehicle program (AV) program needs.”

The Ministry of State told me that only one company responded to its RFI. “As a next step in that process, an official call would be sent out to vehicle manufacturers to bid,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “But the call is on vent and there are no current plans to issue it.”

As Drop Site News and others have pointed out, this procurement document was changed on December 13, 2024, several weeks before Donald Trump took office. RFI was also issued long before the election took place. The original spreadsheet also contains lines for “Armored Ev (not Sedans)” and “Armored BMW.” So it looks like this planning document is in line with other public documents and quite normal.

Now on truths three and four.

Musk is a billionaire who makes a lot of money on contract and editing the document after it was noticed is strange. A search of state databases for SpaceX and Tesla Motors Returns hundreds of contracts worthy billions in contracts. He does not need the $ 400 million and it is credible that he tells the truth when he says he didn’t know anything about it.

After all this became publicly edited any spreadsheet to remove the mention of “Tesla.” According to the state, it was to fix a mistake. “It should have been a generic entry” Manufacturer of Electrical Vehicle, “a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told me. I think it’s true, but I also think it’s strange that they did a stealth editing without issuing any kind of statement to the press in advance. It is enough with ass coating. Hell, it’s ass-covering.

There will be a lot of bullshit over the next four years. Musk and Dogge and Trump break down the federal government and sell it for parts. They will both enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers. They have been doing this for several years.

But it is important that we fight against the fighting that are worth fighting, that we learn how our government works and that we stick to the truth. Pouring over the government’s spreadsheets and being compiled over phantom distributions to Tesla is not productive. There are plenty of real transplants to walk around.