Trump administration official-turned-podcaster Katie Miller reportedly held a lucrative stake in Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company and criticized rival firms online without telling her followers she owned stock, potentially violating ethics rules.
Miller, who is married to White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, holds a stake worth upwards of $500,000, according to financial disclosures released by the White House last week that were analyzed by The Washington Post.
She purchased the shares in xAI in December, according to the disclosures, after Miller left the Trump administration, where she worked with Elon Musk on the White House’s DOGE cost-cutting program. She briefly worked with the tech executive in the private sector after his split with the president, and she reportedly continues to consult with xAI.
The Independent has contacted Miller for comment.
Miller, who now hosts The Katie Miller Podcast, defended her ownership of xAI shares and said there was nothing wrong with her hundreds of posts criticizing other AI companies.
“I’m not getting paid to post, I do it for the love of the game,” she told the paper, adding, “I’ve done what every other person in the world does, which is I own a stock in a company.”
Despite concerns from ethics experts that Miller was promoting a company without fully disclosing her personal interests to the public, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson defended Miller.
“Nothing alleged in here violates any law the FTC enforces,” he wrote on X. “But law and facts don’t matter to the partisan Democrats who will stop at nothing to attack your family. They hate you and they think it’s funny.”
Miller’s original stake in xAI has likely skyrocketed in value in recent months.
In February, xAI became a part of Musk’s rocket and satellite company SpaceX, in a deal valuing the AI company component alone at $250 billion.
In June, the combined company went public in a much-watched IPO, which temporarily made Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
The Miller family previously faced criticism for holding stock in Palantir, a tech company and major government contractor to federal immigration agencies, which are partially overseen by Stephen Miller.
The Millers later sold the shares, according to ethics disclosures released in December.
