President Donald Trump asked Elon Musk to ease restrictions he placed on the military’s version of EspaceXThe Starlink system is installed in Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing U.S. officials.
The Starshield system, which Ukraine depends on in its war against Russia, was “operating more normally on Thursday, shortly after” Trump spoke on the phone with Musk, U.S. and Ukrainian officials told the Journal.
Trump said later Thursday that he didn’t “want to comment one way or the other” about whether he called Musk.
“Whether I called or someone else called, it makes no difference,” Trump told reporters outside the White House as he left for a campaign rally in Iowa.
“At the end of the day, he put it back together,” Trump said of Musk.
The Journal reported Tuesday that Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX and critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had ordered Starlink to be slowed down.
Two unnamed sources in that report said Trump and Musk discussed the decision to throttle Starlink “shortly after” the change became public last week, while one source said Musk spoke to Trump before imposing the speed limit.
Trump has repeatedly denied any involvement in the decision and said he did not know whether Musk was behind the decision.
“I don’t know who did it, but I had no part in it,” Trump said Wednesday.
The Starlink controversy, which has drawn bipartisan concerns and criticism from lawmakers, emerged as Trump stepped up his criticism of Zelensky for continuing to target Russian energy infrastructure. At the same time, Trump reached a deal to ease sanctions on Russia so that it could supply diesel to the global market.
Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday that he doesn’t believe Musk would throttle Starlink without “at least the White House’s OK.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s investigative subcommittee, launched an investigation Thursday into how SpaceX’s satellite technology was “degraded for Ukraine without notice.”
“This decision to limit critical technology for a key ally not only endangers Ukrainian forces and their people, but raises serious questions about who controls critical capabilities that the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars to acquire,” Blumenthal said in letters to Musk and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The White House and an email associated with Musk did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment on Thursday’s report that Trump had asked Musk to lift the restrictions.
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