Elon Musk has poached a long-time Tesla engineer to help with his work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The Tesla CEO appears to feel invincible right now because he did that while he and Tesla’s board are being sued for breach of fiduciary duties and resource tunneling.
Last year, shareholders sued Tesla, the board, and Elon Musk, claiming breach of fiduciary duty.
The lawsuit was filed in Delaware by the Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund (CB&T),
Daniel Hazen, and Michael Giampietro, on behalf of Tesla shareholders.
In the lawsuit, the shareholders argue that Musk has breached his fiduciary duties to Tesla shareholders by founding xAI, a private AI company, poaching Tesla employees, threatening not build AI products at Tesla unless given more control over the company, and for funneling resources from Tesla to his private companies.
Even after the lawsuit was filed, Musk continued to give the lawyers behind it more ammunition by poaching Tesla employees for his many private businesses.
Now, we learn that Musk even poached a Tesla engineer to help in his new role under the Trump administration.
Wired reports that Thomas Shed, a Tesla engineer, has been made “the director of Technology Transformation Services” (TTS), a division of the General Services Administration.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Shed was working on “software, camera and teams that run the vehicle and battery factories” at Tesla as recently as last month:
The report states that Musk recruited several young engineers from his companies and placed them in government positions to advance his anti-DEI and cost-cutting efforts.
Top comment by Connor Paull
placed them in government positions to advance his anti-DEI and cost-cutting efforts.
The correct phrasing of what he is doing is not 'anti-DEI and cost-cutting efforts'. What he is doing is an attempted coup. It's still an open question whether it will be successful.
In Shed’s case, he appeared to have come directly from Tesla into his new government role under Musk.
Electrek’s Take
I can hear the lawyers cheering from here. Elon’s breaches of fiduciary duties are pretty blatant. The problem is that the lawsuit will take years to resolve.
In the meantime, Elon will string shareholders along, telling them that everything he is doing is for the good of Tesla. I hope fewer of them will believe him this time.
And before all you Elon fans attack me in the comments for simply reporting on this, please provide counter-arguments to the point made in this article. That’s the only thing that matters.
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