Musk Connections: Lawyer at Munger, Tolles & Olson, which has represented Tesla
Other Corporate Affiliations: Worked at investment banking firm Houlihan Lokey
DOGE Deployment: Head of team at USAID, assigned to General Services Administration and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Lewin reportedly headed a three person DOGE team at USAID. The Handbasket confirmed that Lewin had access to both the General Services Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Lewin previously worked as a litigation associate for Munger, Tolles & Olson. In 2024, a Tesla shareholder hired the firm to challenge $5.1 billion in plaintiff’s fees in a suit against the company. The plaintiff’s original lawsuit attempted to void Tesla’s $56 billion compensation paid to Musk in 2018. Prior to Lewin’s time at the firm, Munger represented Tesla in efforts to take the company private.
- Lewin’s now-deleted profile on Munger’s website claimed that Lewin’s op-eds had been cited by “dozens of Members of Congress, multiple cabinet secretaries and foreign heads of state.” Lewin also claimed to have confidentially advised the U.S. President, senior Congressional leaders, and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.
CORPORATE AFFILIATIONS WITH MUSK TIES
- Prior to his time at Munger, Lewin worked as an associate at BigLaw firms Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and WilmerHale. Cravath successfully represented Musk against a challenge to Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity that sought $13 billion in damages. Both Cravath and WilmerHale represented Tesla at different stages of a California consumer antitrust case.
- Lewin also previously worked at the investment bank Houlihan Lokey. According to a Tesla proxy statement filed with the SEC in 2024, Houlihan was part of a special committee hired by Tesla to craft and recommend two proposals for a shareholder vote. The committee recommended the Board vote to move the company to Texas and ratify Musk’s 2018 compensation. Musk had previously pushed for Tesla to move its incorporation from Delaware to Texas after a Delaware judge struck down the $56 billion compensation.
PRIOR TO JOINING MUSK’S ORBIT, LEWIN WROTE OP-EDS CRITICIZING THE “ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE” SUPREME COURT AND BIG TECH
- In 2021, Lewin wrote an op-ed in The Guardian arguing that Facebook’s new oversight board, which made content moderation decisions, was not a genuine attempt at preventing misinformation. Because the board could only reinstate posts rather than take them down, Lewin argued that the board only “insulates Facebook from public criticism” and “will force regression in Facebook’s already lax moderation policies.”
- In 2022, while Lewin was a law student at Harvard, he wrote a New York Times op-ed with Professor Laurence Tribe. Tribe and Lewin argued that Biden’s administration should liquidate frozen Russian funds that were in US foreign exchange reserves. They argued that the funds, which could total $100 billion, should be liquidated and “transferred directly to assist humanitarian organizations and the Ukrainian government.”
- In 2022, Lewin wrote an op-ed in The Guardian with Professor Tribe on the Supreme Court’s attacks on climate regulation in West Virginia v. EPA. Lewin and Tribe argued the Supreme Court’s decision to rule on the case was outside its constitutional bounds, stating “as its recent onrush of breaks with precedent, procedure and prudence to achieve the ultra-conservative majority’s policy preferences on abortion, public health and voting rights demonstrate, today’s court flouts all institutional bounds.”