A story about federal government under Donald Trump, and how its dysfunction affects everything, including jobs one would never think to question. $TSLA https://twitter.com/orthereaboot/status/1349053883902013443

When you think about federal automobile safety guidelines, perhaps you think of @RalphNader. Or perhaps you think of boring, aging men wearing suspenders poring over the Federal Register, somewhere in the basement of the Department of Transportation.

The NHTSA assigns individual staff engineers to investigate reported issues with automobiles. There is presumably some kind of pool, and it would make sense for a given engineer to be assigned based on availability and perhaps some overlap with specific expertise.

The engineer assigned to investigate Sudden Unintended Acceleration issues with $TSLA vehicles is an individual by the name of Ajit Alkondon. We know this based on public records released by NHTSA. Mr. Alkondon is a federal employee whose formal title is Safety Defects Engineer.

Joe Taxpayer might reasonably expect that a Safety Defects Engineer spends all day thinking about safety defects in cars, and how to keep drivers safe. But Mr. Alkondon appears to be more than just a Safety Defects Engineer at NHTSA. He has a few side jobs and hobbies.

First, Mr. Alkondon is a real estate investor, tied to at least two LLCs: Lucrum Properties LLC and Pineapple Love Properties LLC. And second, he owns and manages a tutoring company in Virginia. While these activities are perfectly legal, there is a third that is more concerning.

Mr. Alkondon is an active investor, having left comments on numerous on-line investing videos. Some of these videos discuss investing in $TSLA. It's unclear if Mr. Alkondon has invested in any companies whose products he inspects, as he did not respond to a request for comment.

However, Mr. Alkondon does follow "Tesla Daily," SpaceX, Lex Fridman, and Galileo Russell's Hyperchange $TSLA channel on YouTube. And while these may just be educational given his job, he also follows numerous investment-related channels and Bridgewater Associates.

There would only be a violation of law if Mr. Alkondon has invested in an automobile manufacturer. But it is disturbing that we should have to worry at all about whether the people responsible for car safety have other interests at heart, or are part of a CEO's personality cult.

There are no images or links attached to this thread because the goal here is not to embarrass a specific federal employee. This is an important policy issue that can hopefully be addressed at the DOT in the coming administration. CC: @Ctr4AutoSafety @PeteButtigieg

In the short term, if the $TSLA SUA investigation was terminated due to any kind of bias on the part of the investigator, that investigation should be re-examined by someone without those biases, and the @DOTInspectorGen should get involved.