WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk said on Friday he is re-hiring a staff member at the Department of Government Efficiency who resigned a day earlier after he was linked to social media posts that espoused racism.
Musk, in a post on his social media network X, said he would bring back Marko Elez after Vice President JD Vance called for him to be rehired. President Donald Trump later endorsed his vice president’s view.
Marko Elez resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal linked the 25-year-old DOGE staffer to a deleted social media account on X that posted last year, “I was racist before it was cool” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” among other posts.
The account in September included a post that said, “Normalize Indian hate.” The vice president’s wife, Usha Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Vance, in a post on Musk-owned X, said Elez should be brought back and blamed “journalists who try to destroy people.”
“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance said.
“I’m with the vice president,” Trump told a news conference Friday.
A few hours later, Musk posted: “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a message Friday confirming if Elez had been rehired. The administration earlier in the day had confirmed Elez’ resignation.
The vice president said Elez should be fired “if he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team.”
Elez did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday.
Elez was among two DOGE employees who were at the center of a controversy this week when they accessed the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, prompting a court challenge and a judge’s decision to restrict their access.
In its report, The Wall Street Journal found a since-deleted account under the handle @nullllptr with a user described as an employee at SpaceX and Starlink, two of Musk’s companies. The account previously went by the username @marko_elez.
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Elez, in archives of his personal website, said he worked for SpaceX and on its Starlink satellites, and at X.
Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.