A top House Republican leader who regularly meets with President Trump and cabinet officials disclosed a private investment in Elon Musk’s AI company just days before the Pentagon began expanding the firm’s role in U.S. military systems.
According to a financial transaction disclosure, Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain’s husband purchased between $100,001 and $250,000 in private stock of xAI on December 15, 2025. McClain is the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference and has repeatedly appeared alongside President Trump and senior administration officials at meetings and policy announcements, including a Dec. 3 White House event, shortly before the stock purchase, where she joined Trump for a public announcement on lowering car costs.
Days after the purchase, on Dec. 22, the Department of Defense announced plans to integrate xAI’s Grok models into its GenAI.mil platform, a system designed to handle unclassified military information and deliver real-time insights for Defense Department personnel. Then, on Jan. 13, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a major expansion of the military’s integration of Grok, granting the AI access to classified Pentagon networks as part of a broader effort to accelerate military adoption of generative AI tools.
Under the STOCK Act, members of Congress and their immediate family members are prohibited from using nonpublic information obtained through their official positions for personal financial gain and must disclose certain transactions within 45 days. There is no public evidence that McClain received nonpublic information regarding the Pentagon’s decisions involving xAI. In July 2025, xAI, OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic were awarded $200 million contracts by the Department of Defense to develop AI systems that could be implemented in the military.
McClain’s office did not respond to an inquiry for comment on the stock purchase and her potential access to insider information from the administration.
The third-term McClain is a member of the national security-adjacent Special Operations Forces Caucus, the Taiwan Caucus, and the Border Security Caucus.
xAI’s Grok AI, headed up by Musk, has been the subject of constant controversy for generating offensive and misleading content, most recently for generating near-nude images of users without their consent. In his announcement yesterday that Grok will be granted access to classified information, Hegseth said the Pentagon’s new AI strategy would operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” saying the department’s AI “will not be woke.”
Earlier this month, xAI announced it had raised $20 billion in a Series E funding round, including participation from the Qatar Investment Authority as well as strategic U.S. partners like Nvidia and Cisco.
The McClain household’s stock trade also comes amid a broader congressional debate over stock trading by lawmakers. House Republicans this week are advancing a proposal that would limit future stock purchases by members of Congress, though the bill would not require lawmakers to divest from their stock holdings, even when they pose conflicts of interest with their committee work. Many Democrats and watchdog groups have come out against the proposal, arguing that it is a partial solution meant to defuse momentum for a broader fix to congressional stock trading.
