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Michigan U.S. Rep. Lisa McClain is facing tough questions over a newly disclosed private investment her husband made in Elon Musk’s xAI company, right as the U.S. government planned to expand xAI for integration with military systems.
Financial disclosures filed Dec. 15, 2025, show Michael McClain purchased between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of private stock in xAI. The U.S. Department of Defense on Dec. 22, 2025, announced that it was going to integrate xAI’s Grok language model into the GenAI.mil system, which deals in unclassified information and real-time insights.
The trade was first reported by Sludge, a nonprofit news project that covers money and its influence in politics.
Sludge also reported that this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth planned to ramp up xAI and Grok’s integration with military components, now giving Musk’s AI project access to classified Pentagon networks, which will invariably speed up the military’s use of AI.
The STOCK Act prevents congresspeople, or their family members, from making trades using nonpublic information that they might be privy to through their elected offices, and all trades must be disclosed within 45 days, according to the tenets of the act.
Sludge noted that there was no immediate evidence of McClain, a Bruce Township Republican, having received nonpublic information regarding the decision.
That said, talk of xAI, OpenAI and Google’s AI systems being used by the military have been brewing since the summer of 2025.
McClain is a leader in the U.S. House of Representatives’ GOP caucus, and has tight ties with the administration of President Donald Trump.
The representative was asked about the trade, which is being framed as a potential conflict of interest, in a Wednesday evening appearance on News Nation, a burgeoning cable news network. The anchor had asked McClain for assurances that the trade was made without any inside information.
Responding to our report, Lisa McClain says it couldn’t be insider trading because if she had insider knowledge her husband would have bought way more xAI stock. pic.twitter.com/FxSpEmIsHn
— Sludge (@Sludge) January 14, 2026
McClain appeared to be caught off guard by the question, and laughed it off before saying that it was “100%” not made with any insider knowledge. She then justified it by saying that, if she had received insider knowledge, “we wouldn’t have bought $100,000 worth of shares, we would have bought a heck of a lot more.”
“I also want to stop you, because you don’t even have your facts straight on that,” McClain said on the network. “It wasn’t a publicly traded stock, it was about $470 million, of which was a private offering.”
The anchor noted that the conflict of interest here wouldn’t be any different if it had been a public offering or a private offering.
“Quite frankly, I think that’s a very fair question,” McClain said in response. “Especially with all of the insider trading that happens up here. … For one, the Pentagon doesn’t release that information. But I can 100% assure you that we didn’t have insider information.”
Levi Teitel, communications coordinator for Progress Michigan, said McClain violated the public’s trust.
“When our elected officials and their family members profit from corporations with lucrative government contracts, the public starts to lose trust,” Teitel said. “And this is exactly what has happened with Rep. McClain and her husband’s investment in a company that’s working with the Pentagon. Mind you, xAI is owned by Elon Musk, who has been abusing his relationship with Trump to access our personal information while obliterating federal government agencies.”
Teitel added that McClain still needed to answer additional questions to ensure the trade wasn’t made with insider information.
“Did your husband purchase this stock using insider information? Knowing that Musk’s companies are tied to foreign governments, are you concerned about national security risks even when you stand to financially benefit?,” Teiltel said in a statement. “And what do you have to say to the three-quarters of Americans who feel that this kind of behavior is a conflict of interest that needs to stop?”
Teitel also called on Congress to ban their ranks and family members from trading individual stocks.
“It’s no surprise that Rep. McClain hasn’t joined her colleagues in cosponsoring a bipartisan bill meant to prevent this kind of activity from happening,” Teitel said. “We deserve better from our elected officials, and we need leaders who will stand up to this kind of corruption.”
by Ben Solis, Michigan Advance
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: [email protected].
