Tesla (TSLA) falls 10% amid ‘Elongate scandal,’ Musk denies the claim & challenges alleged victim’s friend

Tesla (TSLA) stock has fallen by as much as 10% today after the allegation of sexual misconduct against CEO Elon Musk came out, which is now being called the ‘Elongate’ scandal. Musk has now denied the claim and even challenged the alleged victim’s friend who shared the story.

As we reported yesterday, a publication released a second-hand account of alleged sexual misconduct by Musk on a flight attendant on his private plane.

A friend of the flight attendant told her story after she reportedly signed an NDA and received a $250,000 settlement from SpaceX. She claimed that Musk exposed himself and asked for sexual favors during a massage he requested on the plane.

Musk commented on the original report, but he didn’t outright deny the claim at first other than hinting that it was politically motivated.

The CEO has since took to Twitter to more clearly deny the story calling it “utterly untrue”.

He even challenged the person who told the story to describe distinguishable marks on his body, like scars or tattoos, that haven’t been public:

The statement hasn’t helped Tesla’s stock, which has been taking a beating lately, but even more so today. Tesla (TSLA) is down by as much as 10% today, and the stock is now down to a level that we have not seen since June 2021:

It’s hard to link the latest drop directly to the ‘Elongate scandal,’ but Tesla’s stock is down way more than the rest of the market today despite no other significant news.

This is bad news for all Tesla shareholders obviously, but even more so for Musk who has about $6 billion of his Twitter acquisition deal tied to loans backed by his Tesla shares.

Electrek’s Take

I won’t try to weigh in on the issue of who is saying the truth here because we simply can’t know at this point, but there’s one thing that I think is important to clarify.

I see lots of people saying that Elon was “dead on” for calling out a day before the story came out that the “political attacks” on him were going to ramp up after he called the Democratic party “the party of hate” and said he would be voting Republican.

To be clear, the Insider, who first reported the story, said that they reached out to Musk ahead of publishing the story and even gave him more time to comment.

Therefore, it is almost certain that he was already aware this story was coming out when he announced that he would be voting Republican and predicted that “political attacks” were coming his way.

I think that’s an important distinction, but it doesn’t mean the allegations are true, either.