Elon Musk denies having a thing with Nicole Shanahan 0:44
(CNN Spanish) --
It is not new that Elon Musk is in the center of attention and, on several occasions, also in the center of controversy.
The most recent: The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported that Musk had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google and a longtime friend of the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
The brief relationship with Shanahan would have occurred in December 2021 while she and Brin were separated but still living together.
For his part, Musk denied the romance on Monday through his Twitter account: "I work long hours, so there is not much time for mischief. None of the key people involved in these alleged misdeeds were even interviewed!"
Elon Musk denies affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin
This has been the trend in the life of Musk, who has been characterized as a businessman with erratic behavior or against established norms.
Next, we present other controversies of the billionaire in recent years.
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1. Purchase (failed?) Twitter
The novel about the acquisition of Twitter by Musk continues with a pending outcome.
We could say that it all started at the beginning of 2022, when the businessman began to increase his participation in the social media platform.
From there, the situation has slowly escalated: from the deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion on April 25 (and shortly before that an accepted and rejected position on the board of the social media company), to its official intention. on July 8 to end the agreement (a position that had already been projected since May due to Musk's concern about bots and spam accounts on the platform).
A few days later, on July 12, it was revealed that Twitter had sued the billionaire in an effort to force him to honor their purchase agreement.
A judge ruled that the lawsuit should be resolved in a five-day trial, which will take place in October.
Twitter and Elon Musk will go to trial over purchase agreement 0:49
2. Sons of Musk
Until June 2022, we knew that Elon Musk had seven children: in his first marriage with Justine Wilson he had five and two more with Canadian singer Claire Elise Boucher, better known as Grimes.
But in July it was revealed that Musk had twins in 2021 with an executive from Neuralink, another of the billionaire's companies.
Zilis's professional ties with Musk date back to at least April 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Although this has not uncovered a scandal so far, it does recall the controversial relationship that Musk has had with one of his daughters, Vivian Jenna Wilson, who asked a California court in June to recognize her new name and gender, noting that he no longer wishes to have any relationship with his billionaire father "in any way".
Elon Musk's daughter asks a court to change her last name so as not to be related to her father
3. Accusations of sexual harassment
In May of this year, Musk denied, through his Twitter account, the accusations that he sexually harassed a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016.
Musk took a stand on Twitter on this issue after Business Insider reported that SpaceX paid a $250,000 settlement in 2018 after a SpaceX flight attendant reported sexual misconduct against the billionaire.
Citing documents and interviews she conducted, Business Insider reported that "The assistant worked as a contract cabin crew member for SpaceX's corporate jet fleet. The woman accused Musk of exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent and He offered to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage".
In his request to Business Insider for more time to respond to the allegations, Musk said there was "a lot more to this story."
"If I was inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it has come to light," he added to Business Insider.
The outlet also noted that Musk characterized the story as a "politically motivated coup."
Shortly after, the businessman denied having answered questions to the media.
Elon Musk says it's 'dumb' to call billionaires bad
4. Offenses against politicians
Let's go to 2021. On December 13 of that year, Time magazine named Elon Musk as person of the year.
Of course that earned him the spotlight, but what he did shortly after lit it up even more.
Just days after the Time announcement, Musk took to Twitter to launch personal attacks on Sen. Elizabeth Warren after the lawmaker said he "really should pay taxes."
"Reminds me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom just randomly yelled at everyone for no reason," Musk tweeted to the Massachusetts Democrat.
"Please don't call the manager because of me, Senator Karen (a name that is often used pejoratively on the internet)."
And something similar had already happened.
A month earlier, in November, following a tweet from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders arguing that the "extremely wealthy pay their fair share," Musk replied, "I keep forgetting you're still alive."
5. Musk and the SEC
One of the great battles between Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was in 2018.
On August 7 of that year, Musk announced, via Twitter, that he was looking into taking Tesla private.
He further stated that funding was secured.
Musk announces, via Twitter, that he is studying the possibility of taking Tesla private.
He states that the financing is assured.
Three days later, two shareholders filed lawsuits accusing Tesla and Musk of violating federal securities law by allegedly making false statements to boost the company's stock price.
Musk's tweet about raising funding to take Tesla private on August 7th boosted the company's stock price immediately.
But in the days that followed, he lost most of those gains, reacting, at least in part, to reports in Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal that the SEC was investigating Musk's claim.
On August 24, the businessman stated in a statement that he intended to keep the company public after consulting with the board of directors.
However, this did not stop the sanction against Musk.
On September 27, the SEC sued him for making "false and misleading" statements to Tesla investors via Twitter on August 7.
And, after two days, Musk reached an agreement with the SEC on the fraud charges, in which the businessman would stop being the president of Tesla and pay a fine of US $ 20 million.
Musk is playing with fire 2:11
And the turbulent relationship between Musk and the SEC continues.
In a regulatory filing on Monday, Tesla reported that on June 13 it received a new subpoena from the SEC, which is related to compliance with the agreement reached in 2018.
6. The man in the cave
On dates similar to the legal battle with the SEC, Musk was involved in another controversy.
On September 17, 2018, Vernon Unsworth, the cave explorer who helped rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand in July of that year, filed a defamation lawsuit against Musk in federal court in California.
Musk became angry with Unsworth after the caver criticized Musk's attempts to help in the Thai cave rescue by building a miniature submarine.
On Twitter, Musk unsubstantiatedly claimed that Unsworth was a "pedophile."
Musk doubled down on his claim in other tweets, which he later deleted.
On December 6, 2019, a jury decided that Musk did not defame Unsworth.
7. Tension with the UN
Elon Musk has had tense exchanges even with the United Nations (UN).
In November 2021, the director of the UN World Food Program (WFP), David Beasley, challenged the ultra-rich, and in particular the two richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos and Musk, to "step forward now, in one fell swoop" to help solve world hunger.
"$6 billion to help 42 million people who are literally going to die if we don't reach them. It's not complicated," Beasley said on CNN's "Connect the World" with Becky Anderson.
That sum would equate to roughly 2% of Musk's net worth at the time.
Musk was quick to respond.
That same day, he offered to sell some of his Tesla shares "right now" if the UN could show that $6 billion would solve world hunger.
"US$6 billion will not solve world hunger, but it will prevent geopolitical instability, mass migration and save 42 million people from the brink of starvation. An unprecedented crisis and a perfect storm due to covid/conflict crises /climate," Beasley said.
8. Cryptocurrencies
Musk's tweets can cause turbulence.
Ask cryptocurrency holders.
His comments on his Twitter account, or also in performances on television shows, have impacted the virtual currency market.
Let's give just a few examples of this:
On May 9, 2021, dogecoin fell due to Musk's jokes about this cryptocurrency in his presentation on
Saturday Night Live
.
The price of this coin had risen before this event thanks to comments from the billionaire.
A few days later, on May 13, bitcoin fell 12% when the billionaire said that Tesla, his company, would not receive the cryptocurrency as payment for its electric vehicles.
A month later, on June 14, Musk moved bitcoin again, this time towards profit, after stating that Tesla would accept bitcoin again if the mining of this cryptocurrency adopts clean energy.
Elon Musk, guilty of the fall of cryptocurrencies?
1:13
9.Covid-19
Since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, Musk began to criticize some of the confinement measures imposed in the United States.
As recently as April 2020, a month after the pandemic broke out, he criticized stay-at-home orders meant to curb the coronavirus pandemic, calling them "fascist" and comparing them to "forcibly imprisoning people at home." ".
And a few months later, in September, the businessman said in a podcast that he would not get a vaccine against covid-19 when one was available (it should be remembered that they began to be available towards the end of that year).
In that same podcast, where he was interviewed by journalist Kara Swisher, he also refused to answer if he felt a duty to pay employees who want to stay home to avoid contracting the virus.
10. Violation of labor laws
In September 2019, a California labor judge ruled that Elon Musk's Tesla violated labor laws by threatening employees when they tried to unionize.
Administrative Law Judge Amita Baman Tracy ruled that Tesla had violated the National Labor Relations Act multiple times in 2017 and 2018.
The violations included a tweet from Elon Musk in May 2018 that read: "Nothing stops the Tesla team at our auto plant from voting for the union. They could tomorrow if they wanted to. But why pay union dues and quit? stock options for nothing?
The judge said the tweet amounted to "threatening employees" that they would lose their stock options if they voted to unionize.
"Musk's tweet can only be read by a reasonable employee to indicate that if employees vote to unionize they will drop stock options," Tracy wrote.
"Musk threatened to take away a benefit enjoyed by employees as a result of voting to unionize."
In May 2021, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Musk to delete the tweet in question, and also ordered Tesla to rehire an employee who supported the formation of the union and who was fired.
In both the 2019 ruling and the 2021 ruling, Tesla did not respond to requests for comment in the moments after the fact.
This report includes information from Anna Cooban, Jennifer Korn, María Alejandra Requena, Sara Ashley O'Brien, Chris Isidore, Rob McLean, Jackie Wattles, Chris Cillizza, Paul R. La Monica, Jackie Wattles, Jethro Mullen, Julia Horowitz, Danielle Wiener -Bronner, Kerry Flynn, Eoin McSweeney, Adam Pourahmadi, Walé Azeez, David Goldman, Rishi Iyengar, Rob McLean, Ganesh Setty, Clare Duffy, and Shannon Liao.
Elon Musk