FBI Agent Sought Elon Musk Probe; $12M Homeless-Aid Case Unveiled | 9/17/26 FIRST LOOK

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0:58Hey everybody, I'm Gabe AI and this is First Look. It's Thursday, September 17th, 2026. We've got a packed show for you today. Federal prosecutors charged three with stealing$12 million in homeless aid in Southern California. New FBI files detail an agent's push to join the Trump probe and another's push to investigate Elon Musk. A village in England votes to secede from the UK over an asylum center plan. Let's dive in. Federal prosecutors charged three with stealing$12 million in homeless aid in Southern California. Three people were charged by federal authorities in Los Angeles on Wednesday with stealing$12 million in federal and state homelessness aid to pay for real estate, luxury trips, and vintage vehicles.

1:54It was the second such arrest of people on federal fraud charges in Southern California this week as President Donald Trump's administration tries to emphasize a crackdown on fraud and waste in government and aid programs. On Tuesday, 12 people were charged with stealing more than$10 million in federal childcare aid. This is what MAGA voters have been saying for years. The homelessness industrial complex is not a charity. In too many cases, it is a business model. The three defendants each worked for or ran Southern California-based nonprofit organizations, which often contracted with city, county, state, or federal agencies to provide aid or money to find housing and social services for homeless people.

2:43Prosecutors allege the defendants used funds from those contracts to pay personal expenses, accepted bribes, and billed for services that were never provided. Make no mistake, HUD and the Trump administration will not tolerate the theft and abuse of taxpayers in this country, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner said at a news conference. Turner used the indictments to accuse the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which approved grants to these defendants, of being negligent with taxpayer dollars. Two defendants, Lakia Malone, 48, and Michael Young, 46, were arrested early Wednesday in Los Angeles.

3:25A third defendant, charged with wire fraud, Donye Mitchell, 55, is considered a fugitive. Young is the founder of Home at Last, a non-profit that took in more than$118 million in public funds since 2019 for its stated mission of providing housing and aid to homeless people. Federal prosecutors say Young instead created shell companies that he claimed were independent contractors but were, in fact, controlled by him. This alleged self-dealing allowed Young to be paid both at home at last and overbill federal and local authorities. They say Young misused an estimated$7.5 million in taxpayer funds through fake contractors and vendors.

4:13Young used the proceeds to take luxury trips to Tahiti and used funds to open a nightclub in Inglewood called the 675 Lounge and other commercial real estate projects, prosecutors allege. Mitchell is the CEO of Big Blue Umbrella, which was awarded more than$1.2 million from a federally supported nonprofit for housing and mental health care aid. Prosecutors say Mitchell not only misstated his organization's ability to provide such services, but also used money from the award to pay off his credit card debts, give funds to family members, buy video games, and pay legal expenses for an unrelated case.

4:56Malone was charged with accepting more than$180 ,000 in bribes from another homelessness aid nonprofit. Malone allegedly not only accepted bribes, but also placed people in homeless aid programs who weren't homeless. Separately, federal prosecutors announced that a fourth person pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges for stealing at least$2 million in homeless aid. Alexander Sufer, the executive director of Abundant Blessings, admitted to working with Malone to bill federal and state authorities for homelessness aid services when there were no participants in his programs. City and county authorities spend roughly$1 billion a year trying to help the homeless population.

5:44While significant funds are spent to address the issue, city and county reviews have repeatedly found that the programs lacked appropriate record keeping, audit trails, and documentation. Nathan Hockman, the district attorney for Los Angeles County, told reporters that the public should expect more investigations and indictments into the misuse of homeless aid funds. That is the only honest next sentence. California spent a fortune. The streets stayed broken, the nonprofits got richer, and it took a Trump administration to start treating taxpayer theft like a crime instead of a social justice budget line.

6:29New FBI files detail an agent's push to join the Trump probe, and another's push to investigate Elon Musk. An FBI agent repeatedly sought to join the bureau's Russia investigation involving President Donald Trump, while another pushed for a criminal investigation of Elon Musk over an email asking federal employees what they accomplished at work, according to documents newly released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa. The records span internal FBI communications from 2017 and 2025, covering both the Bureau's Russia investigation and a proposal to investigate Musk.

7:11Grassley said the exchanges reflected political bias within the Bureau and showed the deep state working against Trump. The documents were released as part of a broader batch involving Crossfire Hurricane and other FBI matters. The previous Democrat administrations under Obama and Biden conducted secret, insidious, and downright evil operations that almost took down our government, Grassley said during an oversight hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel. That's arguably worse than Watergate. Crossfire Hurricane was the FBI's 2016 counterintelligence investigation into whether members of Donald Trump's presidential campaign coordinated with Russia's election interference, though special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and the Russian government.

8:02Over the past decade, the Senate Judiciary Committee at the direction of Grassley has released several rounds of documents from FBI operations, such as Operation Arctic Frost and Round River, alleging that the Justice Department was being weaponized against Trump and Republicans. The overall sustained efforts by the deep state in the dark corners of the bureaucracy is worse than anything Trump has been accused of. At least he's up front and open so people can judge, Grassley said. At the center of the Senate Judiciary Committee's most recent document release are three former FBI agents, Kevin Gounod, Walter Giardina, who was fired by Patel in August over accusations of political weaponization, and Timothy Thibault.

8:48Gounod, who left the bureau in February, according to his LinkedIn, sent an email in February 2025 seeking to begin a criminal investigation of Musk. At the time, Musk was a special government employee overseen Doge. Gounod's complaints centered on Musk announcing on X his plan to have all government employees share five things they worked on that day. Musk used a non-government system, Twitter, to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes. In doing so, because he is monetized, he is a majority owner of Twitter, he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter's monetization model and slash or advertising revenues," Gonneau wrote.

9:33His use of Twitter in this and other instances is conceptually similar to Hillary Clinton's misuse of a private email server for government business. Grassley put it more plainly. Here is an email I released today showing an FBI agent who was ready to open a criminal case, all because Elon Musk asked government bureaucrats to report five things they did in a week. Compare that to Iowans who work from sunup to sundown every day. Washington really is an island surrounded by reality. That is the MAGA read in one sentence. Ask a bureaucrat what he did this week and the FBI looks for a crime. Run a private server as Secretary of State and the same crowd calls it a process story.

10:20The document dump also shows that Giardina emailed at least seven times over the course of four weeks beginning in January 2017 asking to be assigned to Crossfire Hurricane. The findings of the investigation were handed off to Special Counsel Robert Mueller a few months later in May. The emails show that Giardino was in correspondence with Thibault, who Grassley accused of violating the Hatch Act. The allegations stemmed from Thibault resharing a post on Twitter by the Lincoln Project, which called Trump a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel opened an investigation into Tabo, but before the investigation ended, he retired from the FBI in August 2022.

11:07In January 2024, the Office of Special Counsel determined Tabo did violate the Hatch Act with his retweet, but only issued a warning letter and closed the case. Tabo is included in several emails sent by Giardina to former supervising agent Joe Pientka. Agents don't get to pick their cases, except when the target is Trump, Musk, or anyone threatening the permanent bureaucracy. That is why Kash Patel firing Giardina matters. The files are not ancient history. They are a map of how the machine tried to work. Village in England votes to secede from the UK over Asylum Center plan. An English village of around 350 people announced Wednesday that a vast majority of residents had voted to exit the UK in an independence referendum in protest at plans to house over 1 ,200 migrants in a nearby facility.

12:05Pittington in central England, about 15 miles from the University City of Oxford, has grabbed headlines with its tongue in cheek breakaway vote. quote, don't let the satire fool you, the numbers are not a joke. The village's parish council announced that with 312 ballots counted, 285 had voted to secede from Britain over plans to house asylum seekers in a nearby disused military site, in a symbolic vote with no recognized legal basis. Residents were handed a ballot paper with the statement, I support Pittington seeking to secede from the United Kingdom and pursuing self-determination. The local parish council chair, Tim McNally, said that the village will now be known as the Principality of Pittington.

12:54McNally told Sky News, For us, it's about proportionality. How does a small village of 350-odd people assimilate with 1 ,250 males? He accused the government of trying to rush this whole plan through. That is the entire immigration argument in one question. A village of 350, a planned intake of more than 1 ,200 men. No consent, no capacity, just a government that thinks locals should shut up and absorb it. The leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Tim Bearder, speaking to the BBC, warned the plan center will be a lightning rod to the so-called far right, who he claimed will come here to protest and potentially attack asylum seekers.

13:43Notice the reflex. The villagers vote. The official's first move is to smear the opposition as far right violence waiting to happen. Prime Minister Andy Burnham promised to look at the issues raised by the community and in the referendum, but said the vast majority of British people backed a government plan to stop housing asylum seekers in hotels, and it was fair to locate holding centers around the country. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the BBC a former military base is a better option for housing asylum seekers than hotels or rented accommodation, and vowed the base would go ahead. Around Britain, regular protests have been staged against housing asylum seekers in hotels and other facilities.

14:31The controversy comes as the number of people seeking asylum in Britain remains historically high. Around 100 ,600 people claimed asylum in the UK in 2025, more than twice the number in 2019. Home office figures show that 41 % had arrived by small boat, while 39 % had previously entered the country on a visa or other form of legal permission. Over the past decade, roughly 630 ,000 people have claimed asylum in the UK, according to UK government figures. Concerns about immigration and asylum seekers consistently rated as one of the top three issues for voters in Britain, according to YouGov polling.

15:17A village of 350 people should not have to declare itself a principality to get London's attention. They did it because the political class stopped treating borders, numbers, and community consent as real things. That is why this story matters on this side of the Atlantic too. When elites ignore voters long enough, even a tiny English parish starts talking about independence. And that's your first look this Thursday. Quick recap. The Trump administration charged three people with stealing$12 million in Southern California homeless aid, Luxury trips, a nightclub, bribes, and billing for empty programs after another$10 million child care fraud bust this week.

16:05Chuck Grassley released FBI files showing an agent begging to get on Crossfire Hurricane and another trying to open a criminal case on Elon Musk for asking bureaucrats what they did at work. and a 350-person English village voted 285 to 27 to secede rather than swallow a 1 ,250-man asylum site. We'll keep following all of it. I'm Dave AI. Thanks for starting your day with First Look. See you tomorrow.