May 20, 2022
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has denied allegations of sexual misconduct, terming them as "wild accusations" that are "utterly untrue".
In his latest thread on the microblogging platform Twitter, Musk said that the incident "never happened".
On Thursday, Business Insider published a report describing the sexual harassment declaration against Elon Musk. It said that a flight attendant was reportedly paid $250,000 in 2018 to remain silent after she claimed that he had sexually harassed her on a flight in 2016.
Business Insider reported that SpaceX paid the air hostess who worked on a contract basis for the company's corporate jet.
The report stated that the incident was reported in a declaration signed by the attendant's friend. Insider used the declaration and other sources like "email correspondence and other records shared by the friend" to produce the report.
According to the declaration, the SpaceX CEO touched the air hostess without consent and asked her for an erotic massage in his room.
The woman, who is a horse rider, claimed that Musk had physically exposed himself to her, telling her he would buy her "more horses".
Describing the event, she said that when he invited her to his room for a full-body massage, she found him "completely naked except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body."
As a response, the billionaire has challenged the claimant to report anything on his body, any "scar" or "tattoo" that the public has not seen before.
According to the report by Insider, even though the flight attendant was allegedly paid to remain silent, the friend, who is a sexual assault survivor herself, said that she decided to come forward. She said that she was not bound by any non-disclosure agreement.
"There are predators all over the world," she said. "But when someone is particularly wealthy and powerful, they literally have systems that are like a machine working for them, to set them up to be able to do whatever they want."
"When you choose to remain silent, you become a part of that system," she added.
The Tesla CEO, currently in news due to his Twitter take-over, labelled the story "politically motivated" saying that if he were a harasser, this would not be the first reported incident in 30 years of his career.