WWIII

U.S. deploys warships as Russian fleet makes close pass to Florida in approach to Cuba

Michael Wilner, Nora Gámez Torres
Tue, June 11, 2024 

The U.S. Navy has deployed warships and aircraft to track a Russian naval flotilla after the Russian vessels sailed less than 30 miles off South Florida’s coast on Tuesday, U.S. officials told McClatchy and the Miami Herald.

Last week, Moscow sent three ships and a nuclear-powered submarine to the Caribbean for what U.S. officials say will be a set of extensive military air and naval exercises — the first of their kind in at least five years.

The drills began on Tuesday in the Atlantic, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, with its hypersonic-capable frigate and nuclear-capable submarine simulating a strike on a group of enemy ships. It is unclear whether the frigate is armed with hypersonic missiles, but the U.S. intelligence community has assessed that none of the Russian vessels are carrying nuclear weapons.

NORFOLK (May 25, 2023) The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun (DDG 103) returns to Naval Station Norfolk following a nine-month deployment with Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 10.

While the Biden administration has said it is not concerned by the Russian activity, it has nevertheless authorized the deployment of three powerful destroyers and a submarine reconnaissance aircraft to the region, a U.S. Northern Command official told McClatchy and the Herald on Tuesday.

“In accordance with standard procedures, we’ve been actively monitoring the Russian ships as they transit the Atlantic Ocean within international waters,” the NORTHCOM official said. “Air and maritime assets under U.S. Northern Command have conducted operations to ensure the defense of the United States and Canada. Russia’s deployments are part of routine naval activity which pose no direct threat or concern to the United States.”

The U.S. deployment includes three guided-missile destroyers — the USS Truxtun, USS Donald Cook and USS Delbert D. Black — as well as a Coast Guard cutter, the Stone, and a Boeing P-8 maritime patrol aircraft.

Last week, confirming Russia’s deployment plans, a senior administration official said the U.S. Navy would adopt “whatever the necessary posture is to track and to monitor” their activity as the exercises unfold.

The Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov is on its way to Cuba. Russian Defence Ministry Press Office/TASS/Sipa USA

An additional port call by the Russian ships is possible in Venezuela, multiple officials said. The Biden administration anticipates the exercises will culminate in worldwide naval exercises by Russia that will include deployments from the Caribbean to the South Pacific.

The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces said last week that the Russian missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov, the nuclear submarine Kazan, the oil tanker Pashin and the salvage tug Nikolai Chiker will arrive on June 12 and stay for a week.

Guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook. Credit: United States Navy

Users of the website marinetraffic.com have been tracking the position of the U.S. and Russian ships in recent days. According to the website, the Russian sea rescue tug Nikolay Chiker was positioned 26 nautical miles from Key Largo on Tuesday morning.

U.S. officials acknowledged the close call of the Russian ships, while emphasizing they have remained in international waters.

“We have been monitoring the ships’ paths closely,” a U.S. official said Tuesday. “At no point have the ships or submarine posed a direct threat to the United States.”
Global deployments



The Port of Havana will be particularly crowded this week.

On top of the Russian warships and the nuclear-powered submarine expected to arrive on Wednesday, HMCS Margaret Brooke, a patrol vessel for the Royal Canadian Navy, will arrive Friday and stay until the 17, when the Russian ships are expected to leave.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma said the ship’s visit highlights the “50th anniversary of cooperation ties” with Canada and the “bilateral collaboration for the maintenance of peace in our region.” It did not mention the simultaneous presence of Russian navy assets at the port.

A Venezuelan training ship, the AB Simón Bolívar, will also visit Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second largest city, between June 15 and 19.

U.S. Coast Guard cutter Stone. Credit: United States Coast Guard

Senior US diplomat believes China determined to stabilize relations

David Brunnstrom and Michael Martina
Wed, June 12, 2024 

FILE PHOTO: Illustration shows U.S. and Chinese flags

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States believes China's primary focus currently is its economy and that it is determined to work to stabilize bilateral relations with the United States, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on Wednesday.

Campbell told Washington's Stimson Center think tank China needed to reassure investors and others that it has a plan for its economy and would not be looking to create frictions that could escalate in unpredictable and dangerous ways.

"It's very hard for China to take certain steps without harming its own economy," Campbell said. "And I think we now understand that economic performance is central right now to what is important to President Xi."

Campbell was addressing questions about stepped up pressure China has put on U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, which has included run-ins with the Philippines over rival maritime claims in the South China Sea and increased military activity around Taiwan.

The U.S. and China have taken steps to reengage at high levels diplomatically after relations sank to their lowest point in decades, but serious frictions remain, including China's support for Russia in its war in Ukraine, and worries that Beijing might act against Taiwan as Moscow did against Kiev.

"The hope will be that we'll be able to settle on certain things that are necessary for the sustainment of the global economy, that are unexceptional with respect to national security," Campbell said of the efforts in dialogue with China.

"Ultimately, that requires both strengthening, extending and also careful coexistence, and that's really the nature of the diplomatic challenge that we have in front of us. It is one of the most difficult challenges in the history of American foreign policy."

Campbell said he believed China had some anxieties about North Korea's strengthened relations with Russia, and Washington was concerned about what Russia might provide Pyongyang in return for missiles and artillery shells the U.S. says it has provided to Moscow.

"What is Russia going to provide in exchange to North Korea? Hard currency? Is it energy? Is it capabilities that allow them to advance their nuclear or missile products? We don't know, but we are concerned by that."

Campbell said the U.S. has had no engagement with North Korea for years and it was hard to envisage when this might resume.

He said China and North Korea's support for Russia in Ukraine would be discussed "in full" at next month's NATO summit, but stressed that no new mission in the Indo-Pacific on the part of the U.S.-led Western alliance was in the offing.

On China's pressure on the Philippines, Campbell, who met the secretary-general of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Kao Kim Hourn, in Washington on Monday, said ASEAN should "send an unmistakable message about concerns with respect to provocations in what is clearly the Philippines' waters."

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Michael Martina; Editing by Sandra Maler)

UBS Private Event Draws Clients to Fast-Growing ESG Idea

Natasha White

Wed, Jun 12, 2024


(Bloomberg) -- UBS Group AG just held its first-ever conference dedicated to the ESG theme of biodiversity, signaling its ambitions to grow in a business area that Credit Suisse had targeted for expansion before its collapse.

Judson Berkey, group head of engagement and regulatory strategy at UBS, said the goal is to figure out “what would help unblock finance” for deals focused on protecting natural capital.

It’s not just about protecting assets from potential losses, but about identifying projects and deals that can make investors money, Berkey said in an interview before the London-based event.

“There will be winners and losers,” he said.

UBS says 250 institutional investors, corporate clients, family offices and practitioners attended the private event on Tuesday, which had previously been hosted by Credit Suisse in New York before the bank was taken over by its larger Swiss rival last year. Berkey says UBS had to turn away some clients because demand to attend was greater than the bank could accommodate. It’s now considering expanding the scope of future conferences, he said.

Alistair Purdie, a biodiversity analyst at BloombergNEF who attended the event, said the guest list “highlights the speed at which biodiversity has climbed the finance agenda.”

The world’s biggest banks are increasingly trying to get a foothold in the small but fast-growing market for biodiversity. Standard Chartered Plc has built a dedicated nature innovation hub, which coordinates with bankers across trading, advisory, financing and risk management functions. And JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lloyds Banking Group Plc and NatWest Group Plc are among the banks that have created dedicated senior roles to focus on the business area.

The investment banking arm of UBS is now working on its first debt-for-nature swaps, a product that — in its current form — was pioneered by Credit Suisse. Such swaps bring in institutional investors to help countries refinance existing debt, and then put any savings toward environmental conservation programs.

Click here for ESG-related data about UBS.

UBS’s philanthropic arm is exploring the use of carbon and biodiversity credits to help build a business model for marine-protected areas. And last year, the bank’s asset management arm launched a so-called natural-capital engagement program.

The London conference coincides with the release later this week of a new study by UBS and nonprofit Planet Tracker, examining the kinds of strategies investors can deploy for the energy transition in a way that avoids inadvertently harming nature.

“The transition journey has gotten very, very real, and it’s showing up with some real challenges and trade-offs,” said Lucy Thomas, head of sustainable investing at UBS Asset Management. Now is “the time to face into those and to get smarter on what the solutions could be to manage some of those complexities.”

There’s a growing political and regulatory apparatus in place that makes it increasingly hard to ignore biodiversity, and banks and investors are keen to monetize the development. That includes identifying conflicts between the energy transition and the need to protect biodiversity. Mining is a key example of this tension, as extracting the raw materials needed to power the green transition threatens fragile ecosystems.

Later this year, negotiators from almost 200 governments will gather in Cali, Colombia, to assess progress made against an international agreement signed in 2022 to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 and source $700 billion per year to do so.

Private finance for nature has grown eleven-fold over the past four years to $102 billion, according to new data from the United Nations Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative. Alternative investments, traded debt and private equity drove that growth, as did innovation in financial instruments such as debt-for-nature swaps, new “nature-supportive” exchange-traded funds as well as biodiversity credits, UNEP FI said.

“We are really encouraged by the fact that nature is coming online as a mainstream theme for the financial sector,” said Jessica Smith, UNEP FI’s nature finance lead.

UBS’s Thomas says it’s increasingly clear that companies that have “made the investment to understand and put in place circularity, to understand their supply-chain transparency, and to understand those impacts are potentially better positioned from a market share perspective versus their peers.”

For the finance industry, there’s now an “opportunity in identifying those who are doing this well, as well as those who aren’t thinking about that,” she said.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P

MAGA MAN

Arizona man planned a mass shooting targeting African Americans at an Atlanta concert to incite a race war, feds say

Janelle Griffith
Updated Wed, June 12, 2024

An Arizona man planned a mass shooting targeting African Americans and other minorities at a rap concert in Atlanta in May, looking to incite a race war ahead of the presidential election, federal authorities said.

Mark Adams Prieto was indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on charges of firearms trafficking, transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime and possession of an unregistered firearm. The indictment follows a monthslong investigation by the FBI that ended with his arrest last month, the Justice Department said. A spokesperson for the agency said Prieto is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service for transport from New Mexico to Arizona. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The investigation into Prieto, 58, of Prescott, began in October, after a confidential source reported to FBI Phoenix that an individual, later identified as Prieto, had expressed a desire to incite a race war prior to the presidential election, the arrest affidavit states. The source told authorities that they had spoken to Prieto more than 15 times over three years at various gun shows. The chats grew from small talk to include political conversations, the affidavit says. Within the last year, the source told authorities that Prieto began making suspicious and alarming comments, including “advocating for a mass shooting,” and specifically targeting Blacks, Jews or Muslims, the affidavit says.


The source said “Prieto believes that martial law will be implemented shortly after the 2024 election and that a mass shooting should occur prior” to its implementation, and asked the source in late 2023 if they were “ready to kill a bunch of people,” which indicated to authorities his desire to recruit people to assist him in carrying out an attack, according to the affidavit.

Prieto was a vendor at gun shows in Prescott and would trade firearms from his personal collection, using only cash deals or trades to evade the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, the affidavit says, adding that this was corroborated through monitoring with the help of the source.

The FBI had Prieto under surveillance from January to March.

On Jan. 21, Prieto told the source and an undercover FBI agent acting as an associate of the source at a gun show in Phoenix that he wanted them to help him carry out a mass shooting targeting African Americans at a yet-to-be-determined rap concert in Atlanta, the affidavit says.

According to the affidavit, Prieto said: “The reason I say Atlanta. Why, why is Georgia such a f------up state now? When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as the crime got worse in L.A., St. Louis, and all these other cities, all the [N-words] moved out of those [places] and moved to Atlanta. That’s why it isn’t so great anymore. And they’ve been there for a couple, several years.”

He also said that he wanted to target a rap concert because there would be a high concentration of African Americans there and he planned to leave confederate flags after the shooting to send a message that “we’re going to fight back now, and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country,” and to shout “whities out here killing, what’s we gonna do” and “KKK all the way,” the affidavit says. Prieto said he wanted to show “no mercy, no quarter.”

Prieto is also alleged to have discussed with the source and undercover agent what types of weapons he planned to use, to have suggested that they travel to Atlanta before the attack to store weapons in the area, and to have stressed that the most important thing was a high body count.

Surveillance photo of Mark Prieto at a gun show in Arizona (U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona)

“He specifically said that the attack should occur following Super Tuesday so that they would know the election candidates,” the affidavit says.

About a month later, while under surveillance, Prieto went to a gun show in Phoenix and walked to the source’s vendor booth, where he asked the source and the undercover agent whether they still planned to participate in the attack, the affidavit says. On the second day of that February gun show, Prieto is alleged to have sold a firearm to the undercover agent for $2,000.

On March 23, at a gun show in Prescott Valley, Prieto told the undercover agent that he still planned to go forward with the attack, saying that if they waited until after the election, “they might have everything in place you can’t even drive, you’ll be stopped,” the affidavit says. He also said that the targeted event would likely be a rap concert at State Farm Arena in Atlanta scheduled to take place May 14 and May 15, or sometime in June or July, according to the affidavit. Authorities did not specify what concert, but the May dates provided match two nights Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny was scheduled to perform at that arena. Prieto told the undercover agent that he wanted them to wear hoodies, according to the affidavit, because he believed no one was going to be suspicious about someone wearing a hoodie at a rap concert. The next day, Prieto is alleged to have sold an AR-15 rifle to the undercover agent for $1,000 and instructed him to use it during the attack and to bring as many magazines as he could carry, the affidavit says.

At another gun show in April in Prescott Valley, the affidavit says, when the undercover agent asked Prieto whether the attack would still take place in May, he said he wanted to push it back. Prieto was arrested on a New Mexico interstate on May 14. He admitted to knowing the undercover agent and the confidential source and to having discussed with them conducting an attack on a public venue in Atlanta like a “rock” concert attended by young people and minorities.

“However, he told agents that he did not intend to go forward with the attack,” the affidavit states. He is also alleged to have admitted to having sold an AR-15 to the undercover agent and that he told the agent it would be a good firearm to use in the attack. The affidavit says he also told agents he had five firearms in his vehicle and more at his home. Law enforcement subsequently executed a search warrant at his home and recovered more firearms, including an unregistered short-barreled rifle, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com


Man planned racist mass shooting at Bad Bunny concert to spark ‘race war,’ feds say

Julia Marnin
Wed, June 12, 2024

An Arizona man planned a mass shooting targeting Black concertgoers in Atlanta in an attempt to spark a “race war” before November’s U.S. presidential election, federal prosecutors said.

Mark Adams Prieto, a 58-year-old gun show vendor, intended for the violence to unfold at a “rap concert” at the State Farm Arena on May 14 and May 15, court documents say.

The venue’s calendar shows Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny was the only artist scheduled for those dates.

Prieto’s plan unraveled because he was unaware that the two people he discussed it with between January and May were working with the FBI, according to prosecutors.

Prieto, who is white, revealed the details of his plot — including how he said “he planned to leave confederate flags after the shooting” — with both individuals at gun shows in Arizona, an FBI special agent wrote in an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint.

He was mistaken in believing “they shared his racist beliefs,” prosecutors said.

Prieto, of Prescott, was indicted by a federal grand jury June 11 on charges of firearms trafficking, transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime and possession of an unregistered firearm, the U.S. The Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona announced in a new release.

Information regarding his legal representation wasn’t immediately available.
‘Suspicious and alarming comments’

Prieto landed on the FBI’s radar in October, when one of the people working with the agency informed the FBI’s Phoenix office that Prieto “expressed a desire to incite a race war” before the election, the affidavit says.

Over the past three years, this individual had made small talk with Prieto at multiple gun shows, according to the affidavit.

“Within the last year,” the person told the FBI that Prieto “began making suspicious and alarming comments, including advocating for a mass shooting, and specifically targeting ‘blacks, Jews, or Muslims,’” the affidavit says.

They said Prieto was convinced that martial law will be enforced following the election “and that a mass shooting should occur prior to the implementation of martial law,” the FBI agent wrote in the affidavit.
Why Atlanta?

At a gun show in Phoenix on Jan. 20, Prieto made small talk with this individual and an undercover FBI agent, the affidavit says.

On Jan. 21, the second day of the gun show, Prieto revealed he wanted to carry out a mass shooting against Black people at an Atlanta rap concert, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit says Prieto told them:

“The reason I say Atlanta. Why, why is Georgia such a (expletive) state now? When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as the crime got worse in LA, St. Louis, and all these other cities, all the (racial slurs) moved out of those (places) and moved to Atlanta.”

On Feb. 24, at a gun show in Phoenix, Prieto told the two people working with the FBI that he wanted to cause “panic” and “pandemonium” at the concert, and for the concertgoers to be corralled during the shooting, according to the affidavit.

This photo shows Prieto arriving at the gun show on Feb. 24, according to court documents.

The next day, he sold one of them an “AK-style” rifle and later sold them an “AR-style” rifle on March 24, prosecutors said.

On March 23, Prieto had a vendor table with nine firearms at a gun show in Prescott, where he confirmed he wanted the mass shooting to happen May 14 and 15, according to the affidavit.

He then proposed pushing back the date of the attack to June or July, saying “The hotter the weather, the better because people will want to be outside more. When it gets hot, people can’t think straight,” the affidavit says.
Arrest made

Prieto was under constant FBI surveillance as he developed his plan, according to prosecutors.

After leaving Arizona, he was arrested in New Mexico while heading east on Interstate 40 on May 14, prosecutors said.

Inside his car, authorities found seven firearms and located additional guns at his home, “including an unregistered short-barreled rifle,” according to prosecutors.

If convicted on a firearms trafficking charge he could be sentenced up to 15 years in prison and fined up to $250,000, the U.S. Attorney’s office said. If Prieto is convicted of transfer of firearm for use in a hate crime, the charge carries the same maximum penalties.

For the charge of possession of an unregistered firearm, Prieto could be sentenced up to 10 years in prison and fined up to $250,000 if he’s convicted, according to prosecutors.

Prieto was ordered to be detained ahead of trial because “the nature and seriousness of danger to the community is extreme,” court records show.

GOP women who helped defeat a near-total abortion ban are losing reelection in South Carolina

JEFFREY COLLINS
Updated Wed, June 12, 2024 at 3:04 PM MDT·4 min read

South Carolina Sens. Sandy Senn, R-Charleston, left, Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, center, and Penry Gustafson, R-Camden, right, show off model spines they were sent by groups who want to outlaw almost all abortions. Gustafson and Senn lost in their reelection bids in the Tuesday, June 12, 2024, Republican primary while Shealy faces a runoff. 

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A near-total abortion ban was defeated in South Carolina with the help of the only three Republican women in the Senate, but after Tuesday’s primary, they’re losing their election bids.

Voters handed the senators – and winners of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award for people who risk their careers for the greater good – two losses and a runoff after they joined with Democratic women to defeat the measure, saying a pregnant woman shouldn’t lose control of her body as soon as an egg is fertilized.

But the state had only men in the Senate in 2012 and may end up without a single Republican woman in the chamber in 2025. There are just two Democratic women among the 46 members.

“You can’t tell me that’s not a slap in the face of women,” said Sen. Katrina Shealy who is gearing up for a runoff. “Republican women lose like this over one issue when we fought so hard for other things.”

Bucking the tide

Voters on Tuesday went against a trend of having second thoughts about more restrictive abortion law.

Statewide polling has indicated a near total ban doesn’t have wide support. But turnout was low and races were in Republican-drawn districts, where experts say voters tend to be more fervent about issues like abortion.

The Republican women had forced a compromise, and the state eventually implemented a ban once cardiac activity is detected, typically around six weeks after conception.

“It’s easier to fight mini battles than it is to take on a whole statewide war,” said Dave Wilson, a conservative political consultant who has worked with groups opposing abortion. “In the mini battles, voters can turn around and say they aren’t happy with the stance you took and the way you went about it. It doesn’t take a lot of them.”

The races

Abortion wasn’t the only reason Penry Gustafson lost, said her sole opponent, Allen Blackman, who believes life begins at conception. Gustafson had less than 20% of the vote in a freshly redrawn district that no longer included her base, and where constituents complained she didn’t solve their problems.

Sen. Sandy Senn’s loss by just 31 votes to state Rep. Matt Leber is close enough for a recount, but those rarely alter a race by more than a few votes in South Carolina. The race was fraught with accusations. She posted signs with Leber’s mugshot, which he said were from inflated accusations that never led to convictions.

Leber’s attacks misconstrued Senn’s record and manipulated photos to make her look like the Joker, a DC Comics villain.

Redistricting may have hurt Senn too; her redrawn Charleston district includes more conservatives.

Gustafson thanked her supporters in a Wednesday statement, promising to continue serving the community. Senn isn't going to talk about the race until the recount is finished later this week, she said in an email. Neither woman mentioned abortion.

Leber did not responded to messages.

Shealy' s runoff

Shealy was the only Republican woman to survive the night, but she got just 40% of the vote. She will face attorney and political newcomer Carlisle Kennedy in the June 25 runoff.

Billboards saying Shealy was not “pro-life” were all over her district in Lexington County, which led the charge to flip the state from Democratic to Republican control over the past five decades. Kennedy did not respond to messages Wednesday.

Shealy’s strategy for the primary was to stay above the fray. She will likely change tactics for the runoff, even if that alienates people uncomfortable when a woman raises her voice or takes a stand, she said Wednesday.

South Carolina’s Senate had been all-male for four years when Shealy was first elected in 2012 and rarely had more than one woman in the chamber. If she loses, there is a very good chance the Senate in 2025 will have just two women, both Democrats.

That means the perspective of women, who make up 55% of the registered voters in South Carolina, can get lost and issues she champions like free lunch for all schoolchildren may be ignored, she said.

“I broke that ceiling not for abortion rights — I broke it because we needed someone to care about children and families and veterans and old people,” Shealy said. “All these people no one was taking care of. I came in there and gave them a voice.”

Engineers sue Elon Musk and SpaceX, saying the company mirrored his juvenile, crude X posts

Salvador Hernandez
Wed, June 12, 2024 

Elon Musk, shown at a Hollywood event in April, is the subject of a lawsuit that spotlights crude social media posts and alleges retaliatory firings.

 (Jordan Strauss / Invision / )

SpaceX and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, are being sued by eight former employees who allege they were fired after asking the company to address a toxic work culture they say is rife with sexual harassment and discrimination.

The former employees say Musk encouraged an inappropriate work environment in the spacecraft company with his social media posts, where he often announced important company news including launch dates and accomplishments, but mixed in memes and jokes filled with sexual innuendo.

In the complaint, the former SpaceX engineers say the troubling posts weren't just private rantings from its billionaire CEO. SpaceX told employees to consider Musk's posts on X as official statements and news from the company.


"There was no separation on [Elon] Musk's statements and the company's statements," said Anne Shaver, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. "When employees raised concerns, they were told: 'We can't do anything. SpaceX is Elon, and Elon is SpaceX.'"

A representative for SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk, who owns SpaceX and X, is a prolific user of the social media site formerly known as Twitter. He is known for posts that are questionable at times, attacking politicians, personal opponents and people he disagrees with.

In one post highlighted in the complaint, Musk posted to Chad Hurley, the former CEO of YouTube, "if you touch my wiener, you can have a horse."

In another instance, he posted a picture of Bill Gates with a pregnant-looking stomach with the message, "in case u need to lose a boner fast." In a response to SpaceX competitors, he once posted that they "[c]an't get it up (to orbit) lol."

In one post, he said he was considering making a university in Texas similar to MIT and proposed calling it "TITS."

The online behavior, the lawsuit alleges, seeped into day-to-day work at SpaceX.

"Employees could not escape seeing them or hearing about them," states the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. "Musk's utterances were quickly circulated by email, Teams channels and/or word of mouth and widely discussed."

The lawsuit claims SpaceX's handbook instructs employees to look at Musk's social media feed on X as "a source of approved company news" and encourages employees to share it publicly.

Musk's activity on social media also had another consequence, the lawsuit states: "Musk's conduct of interjecting this juvenile, grotesque sexual banter into the workplace had the wholly foreseeable and intentional result of encouraging other employees to engage in similar conduct."

At SpaceX's Hawthorne offices, the suit claims, company meetings and employees mimicked Musk's humor.

At meetings, the lawsuit alleges, senior engineers called mechanical parts "chodes" and "schlongs." A camera that was placed on the bottom of a second-stage Falcon rocket was referred to as the "Upskirt Camera," and a structure used by astronauts to transfer from SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station was called the "Fun Tunnel," a euphemism for anal sex.

Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the former employees suing SpaceX, alleged that a principal engineer in December 2021 saw a graph on her computer that pointed downward. The engineer made a reference to a penis and asked her, "How can we get it up, up, up?"

Musk, who has been listed by Forbes as one of the wealthiest people on the planet, has long faced allegations of turbulent leadership, including claims of retaliation against those who speak out against him.

When he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk fired a large number of the social media platform's employees, including those who had criticized him, the New York Times reported.

Read more: Elon Musk blasts Apple's OpenAI deal over alleged privacy issues. Does he have a point?

He's also faced allegations of sexual harassment.

Business Insider reported in 2022 that a SpaceX flight attendant was paid $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim, alleging Musk exposed himself to her and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.

On Tuesday, the day the lawsuit was filed, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had a sexual relationship with a SpaceX intern more than 20 years his junior.

The eight employees — four women and four men — were fired in 2022 at the direction of Musk, the complaint alleges, after they drafted an internal letter asking SpaceX executives to denounce Musk's social media posts.

The letter mentioned the allegations against Musk, as well as troubling social media posts that it stated included "subtle sexual harassment" and "bullying." It also asked executives to "condemn Elon's harmful Twitter behavior."

According to the complaint, Holland-Thielen and Tom Moline were told by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell to "stop flooding employees [sic] communications channels" after they shared the letter on June 15, 2022.

The same day, the lawsuit alleges, Musk asked an HR representative to fly from Texas to Hawthorne, and then ordered officials to fire Holland-Thielen and Moline.

SpaceX continued to investigate the authors of the letter and those involved in drafting the document, the lawsuit states, and fired more employees as a result.

"Musk thinks he's above the law," said Laurie Burgess, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. "Our eight brave clients stood up to him and were fired for doing so. We look forward to holding Musk accountable for his actions at trial."

Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.


Elon Musk Sued for Sexual Harassment and Discrimination by Former SpaceX Employees

Sara Donnellan
Wed, June 12, 2024

Elon Musk. Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Eight former SpaceX employees have filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the aerospace company and its CEO Elon Musk.

In the Wednesday, June 12, filing obtained by Us Weekly, the ex-employees allege that Musk ran a workplace that “[treated] women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size.” In addition to the sexual harassment claim, the lawsuit accuses SpaceX and Musk of discrimination, wrongful termination, whistleblower retaliation and unlawful business practices.

“[Musk] trumpets Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (“SpaceX”) as the leader to a brave new world of space travel, but runs his company in the dark ages ... bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter and offering the reprise to those who challenge the Animal House environment that if they don’t like it they can seek employment elsewhere,” the lawsuit alleges.

The eight former SpaceX employees — Paige Holland-Thielen, Yaman Abdulhak, Scott Beck, Rebekah Clark, Deborah Lawrence, Claire Mallon, Tom Moline and André Nadeau — claim that they challenged the alleged toxic workplace environment in an open letter to management and were then fired from SpaceX.

Elon Musk’s Most Controversial Moments Through the Years: Affair Rumors, Kid Drama, Twitter War and More

“Upon information and belief, Defendant Musk personally ordered the Plaintiffs’ terminations,” the lawsuit claims.

Musk, 52, who bought Twitter and rebranded it as X in 2022, has also been accused of “knowingly and purposefully” creating “an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes and commentary that demeaned women and or the LGBTQ+ community.”

Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty Images

The lawsuit cites several examples of Musk’s eyebrow-raising tweets, including his infamous “Pronouns suck” post and the time he shared a photo comparing Bill Gates to the pregnant man emoji with the caption, “In case u need to lose a boner fast.”

The former SpaceX employees claim that Musk’s controversial tweets “immediately permeated” the workplace to the point that “employees could not escape seeing them or hearing about them” at work.

“Musk also intentionally drew employee attention to his Twitter feed by frequently using the account to report out company news. For instance, Musk’s idea for ‘TITS’ university was announced in the midst of reporting on a successful rocket launch,” the filing claims. “Musk’s conduct of interjecting this juvenile, grotesque sexual banter into the workplace had the wholly foreseeable and intentional result of encouraging other employees to engage in similar conduct.”

The alleged “pervasively sexist culture” of SpaceX was further perpetuated by the “common” practice of engineers applying “crude and demeaning names to products in an attempt at humor, often at the expense of women and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the lawsuit claims.

“The name ‘Upskirt Camera’ was used for a camera on first stage of the Falcon rocket that views the bottom of the second stage,” the filing alleges, further claiming that “Fun Tunnel,” a euphemism for anal sex, and “B-plugs,” a euphemism for anal sex toys, were used to describe other products.

Us Weekly has reached out to Musk’s team for comment.

The new lawsuit is not the first time Musk has come under fire for sexual misconduct allegations. In May 2022, Business Insider reported that SpaceX had settled a claim with a former SpaceX flight attendant who accused Musk of exposing himself to her on his private jet in 2016 and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.

Musk reacted to the claims via X after the report was published.

“The attacks against me should be viewed through a political lens — this is their standard (despicable) playbook — but nothing will deter me from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech,” he wrote at the time.

Those allegations reappeared in Wednesday’s lawsuit, with the eight former SpaceX employees claiming that SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell “issued a company-wide email supporting Musk and insisting that the anonymous complainant was lying” at the time.

“Plaintiffs were aghast at SpaceX’s formal response to the allegations of Musk’s sexual harassment — calling out and castigating the alleged victim — as this response obviously undermined, rather than affirmed, employees’ right to be free from sexual harassment,” the filing reads.


Fired SpaceX employees sue the company for wrongfully terminating critics of CEO Elon Musk

The Associated Press
Wed, June 12, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — Eight former employees sued SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk, alleging that Musk ordered them fired after they challenged what they called rampant sexual harassment and a hostile “Animal House”-style work environment at the company.

The employees, who filed suit in a California state court, detailed their complaints in a 2022 open letter to management they shared via a company intranet. The next day, four of the plaintiffs were fired, they alleged; others were terminated later after an internal investigation.

In January, the federal National Labor Relations Board filed its own complaint against SpaceX based on issues raised by nine fired employees.

Among other workplace concerns, the open letter called on executives to condemn Musk’s public behavior on X — the platform then known as Twitter — and to hold all employees accountable for unacceptable conduct. Musk’s actions included making light of sexual harassment allegations against him — charges that the billionaire denied.

“As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company,” the open letter said at the time. The letter also referred to Musk’s actions as a ”frequent source of distraction and embarrassment.”

The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages.

The complaint drew connections between Musk's behavior — in particular, his often lewd posts on Twitter — and the working environment at SpaceX. It states that one of the plaintiffs, Yaman Abdulhak, noted that many of the inappropriate examples cited in a 2021 “appropriate behavior” employee training “closely resembled the contents of Musk's tweets.” Abdulhak sent examples of those tweets to the SpaceX human resources director, who took no action, the complaint stated.

SpaceX did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment.

Musk and SpaceX sued by former employees alleging sexual harassment and retaliation

David Ingram

NBC
Updated Wed, June 12, 2024

Eight former SpaceX employees are suing the rocket company and its CEO Elon Musk, alleging that Musk personally ordered their firing after they accused SpaceX of tolerating sexual harassment in the workplace.

The eight employees were all fired in 2022 after they circulated an “open letter” within SpaceX alleging that Musk’s “behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment,” according to a copy of the lawsuit provided by their lawyers.

The lawsuit alleges that Musk “runs his company in the dark ages — treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter, and offering the reprise to those who challenge the ‘Animal House’ environment that if they don’t like it they can seek employment elsewhere.”

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, defended the company Tuesday in comments to The Wall Street Journal in an article detailing many of the former employees’ accusations.

Shotwell told the Journal that its reporting painted “a completely misleading narrative” of the company and that “Elon is one of the best humans I know.” She told the newspaper that SpaceX fully investigates all complaints of harassment and takes appropriate actions.

SpaceX Starship rocket. (Brandon Bell / Getty Images file)

The lawsuit alleges several violations of federal and state labor law, including that Musk “engaged in sexually harassing conduct and creation of a hostile work environment personally” and that he retaliated against the employees for “opposing the discrimination, harassment, and hostile work environment that they observed.”

Some of the plaintiffs say they directly experienced sexual harassment, according to the lawsuit. One, Paige Holland-Thielen, an engineer, says that a higher-ranking employee responded to a graph of plotted data by making a “sexual allusion to an erect penis” and asking her, “How can we get it up, up, up?” according to the lawsuit. She reported the matter to SpaceX’s human resources office and didn’t know the outcome, the suit says.

Another plaintiff, engineer Rebekah Clark, said in the lawsuit that she heard comments about breasts at work after Musk made a sexually charged comment on X. She raised her concerns to SpaceX managers at a meeting in 2022 and was told “SpaceX is Elon and Elon is SpaceX,” according to the lawsuit.

And a third, engineer Claire Mallon, says she reported a male colleague to HR for repeatedly bringing up sexually explicit topics with her, including inviting her to a sex party. HR “did not take any discernible action” and the man was promoted, the suit says.

The suit alleges that Musk’s posts on Twitter, now X, encouraged sexually inappropriate language and behavior in the workplace among rank-and-file employees. It cites at least 20 of his posts, including several that make penis references.

NBC News has not independently verified the veracity of the former employees' claims.

The eight firings were already the subject of a complaint against SpaceX brought in January by a National Labor Relations Board regional official, who accused the company of violating federal labor law. SpaceX responded to that complaint with a lawsuit seeking to have the structure of the NLRB declared unconstitutional. The NLRB complaint and the related lawsuit are still pending.

Wednesday’s lawsuit is different from the NLRB complaint because it seeks to hold Musk personally liable for SpaceX’s workplace environment and for the terminations.

“Musk thinks he’s above the law. Our eight brave clients stood up to him and were fired for doing so,” Laurie Burgess, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. "We look forward to holding Musk accountable for his actions at trial."

The lawsuit was filed in California state court in Los Angeles, according to the copy provided by the lawyers.

It comes one week after SpaceX was in a worldwide spotlight for successfully launching its 400-foot Starship megarocket on an uncrewed test flight to orbit and back.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Former SpaceX employees allege Elon Musk and execs appeared in a video joking about spanking coworkers

Geoff Weiss
Wed, June 12, 2024

Former SpaceX employees allege Elon Musk and execs appeared in a video joking about spanking coworkers


Eight former SpaceX employees are suing the company and Elon Musk.


They say they were fired after speaking up about a hostile work environment.


The lawsuit alleges Musk treated women as "sexual objects" and used lewd banter.

Eight former SpaceX employees have sued the company and its CEO, Elon Musk, alleging they were wrongfully fired for speaking out against a hostile work environment in 2022.

The suit, filed in California, notes employees wrote an open letter to SpaceX management about their concerns. Musk then personally ordered their terminations, the suit alleges.

The complaint alleges Musk "runs his company in the dark ages — treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter, and offering the reprise to those who challenge the 'Animal House' environment that if they don't like it they can seek employment elsewhere."


The lawsuit accuses Musk and other upper management of appearing in a video that made light of sexual misconduct, which was screened at an employee holiday party.

One scene shows VP of human resources Brian Bjelde "having an employee demonstrate how to spank him in the 'correct' manner," according to the suit.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

"Filing this suit marks an important milestone in our quest for justice, for holding leadership accountable, and for implementing responsible changes in workplace policies," one of the plaintiffs, Paige Holland-Thielen, said in a statement.

The lawsuit accuses SpaceX of creating a hostile work environment, retaliation, failure to prevent harassment, gender discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, and wrongful termination.

The same group of former SpaceX employee previously filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging they were targeted for retaliation.

But that case has been tied up after SpaceX sued the agency and said its enforcement processes violated the US Constitution. In May, an appeals court granted Musk's firm a temporary block that keeps the NLRB from pursuing its case.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal published a report on Wednesday alleging Musk had inappropriate interactions with female SpaceX employees, including a sexual relationship with a former intern.

The refreshed allegations of sexual misconduct come at a complicated time for Musk. On Thursday, Tesla shareholders will vote on Musk's contentious $55 billion pay package, potentially handing the billionaire a massive boost in wealth.

WSJ details Elon Musk's pattern of sexual involvement with SpaceX employees

Musk had sexual relationships with two female employees and asked a third to have his babies.

Steve Dent
·Reporter
Wed, June 12, 2024

Elon Musk had sexual relations with a SpaceX intern who was later hired onto his executive staff as a troubleshooter, The Wall Street Journal reported. He also had an intimate relationship with a second employee and allegedly asked a third woman to have his babies, according to the report. When the latter refused, Musk denied her a raise and complained about her performance, according to the WSJ's sources.

In one case, Musk pursued a relationship with an intern. Later, he contacted her about a fulltime job at SpaceX to "find problems at the company and fix them," according to the report. She became a full-time member of Musk's executive group, something former employees found unusual for someone so junior — despite her talent as an engineer. (The woman told the WSJ that she didn't want to be part of the article and said in an affidavit that her and Musk remained friends.)

Another woman said she was accused by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell of having an affair with Shotwell's husband. The woman reported the event to HR, something that allegedly got back to Shotwell. Shotwell then demanded the woman be removed from the chief executive's office. Musk later had a sexual relationship with the same woman, who has since left the company.

The WSJ said its reporting is based on text message, emails, documents and interviews with more than 48 people, "including former employees, people familiar with Musk’s interactions with female subordinates and friends and family of the women."

Musk didn't reply to the WSJ. In a comment, Shotwell said:

"The untruths, mischaracterizations, and revisionist history in your email paint a completely misleading narrative. I continue to be amazed by what this extraordinary group of people are achieving every day even amidst all the forces acting against us. And Elon is one of the best humans I know."

This is far from the first report about inappropriate behavior at SpaceX, though. Late in 2021, former employees described a "culture of sexual harassment" at the company, including unwanted advances, lewd comments and physical contact. Last year, Musk was accused of sexual misconduct by a SpaceX flight attendant and earlier in 2024, a SpaceX lawsuit claimed repeated instances of gender discrimination and basic safeguarding failures.

SpaceX sued by fired engineers, alleging Elon Musk allowed ‘pervasively sexist culture’
Reuters
Wed, June 12, 2024 

Elon Musk and SpaceX rocket


Rocket maker SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk were sued on Wednesday by eight engineers who say they were illegally fired for raising concerns about alleged sexual harassment and discrimination against women.

The engineers — four women and four men — claim Musk ordered their firing in 2022 after they circulated a letter calling the billionaire a “distraction and embarrassment” and urging executives to disavow sexually charged comments he had made on social media. The lawsuit was filed in state court in Los Angeles.

The plaintiffs cited a series of tweets by Musk, several of which reference his penis, including one from 2022 telling the former CEO of YouTube “if you touch my wiener, you can have a horse.”

The engineers — four women and four men — claim Elon Musk ordered their firing in 2022 after they circulated a letter calling the billionaire a “distraction and embarrassment.” REUTERS

The lawsuit says Musk’s conduct fostered a “pervasively sexist culture” at SpaceX where female engineers were routinely subjected to harassment and sexist comments and their concerns about workplace culture were ignored. Senior engineers, for example, used euphemisms for sexual acts and male genitals to describe rocket components, according to the lawsuit.

“These actions … had the foreseeable and actual result of offending, causing distress, and intruding upon Plaintiffs’ well-being so as to disrupt their emotional tranquility in the workplace,” the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SpaceX has denied wrongdoing, saying the 2022 letter was disruptive and the workers were properly fired for violating company policies. The company has also denied that Musk was involved in the decision to fire the engineers.

Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement provided by her lawyers that Wednesday’s lawsuit is an attempt to hold SpaceX leadership accountable and spur changes in workplace policies.

“We hope that this lawsuit encourages our colleagues to stay strong and to keep fighting for a better workplace,” she said.

The eight engineers are already the focus of a National Labor Relations Board case claiming that their firings violated their rights under US labor law to advocate for better working conditions.

SpaceX filed a lawsuit claiming that the labor board’s in-house enforcement proceedings violate the Constitution. A US appeals court last month paused the NLRB case while it considers SpaceX’s bid to block it from moving forward pending the outcome of the company’s lawsuit.

Wednesday’s lawsuit accuses SpaceX and Musk of retaliation and wrongful termination in violation of California law, and further accuses the company of sexual harassment and sex discrimination.

The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and an order barring SpaceX from continuing to engage in its allegedly unlawful conduct.



Elon Musk had sex with SpaceX worker who began as intern, asked another to have his babies: report

Ariel Zilber
Wed, June 12, 2024 

Elon Musk had a sexual relationship with a SpaceX employee who started at the company as an intern and was then hired not long after she finished college before she ended things, according to a report.

Musk, who has a fortune valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $198 billion as of Wednesday, also pursued relationships with other female subordinates at his rocket company, including with one woman who was asked by the mogul to bear his children, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The mogul also carried on a month-long sexual relationship with a third woman who reported to him directly at SpaceX before the two cut ties, according to the report.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reportedly pursued sexual relationships with several female subordinates, including one he hired after she interned at the company. REUTERS

The third woman and Musk were involved romantically after she was accused of having an affair with the husband of another SpaceX executive, it was reported.

The Post has sought comment from SpaceX and Musk.

Musk first met the then-intern in the early 2010s when she was a college student studying engineering.

According to the Journal, Musk and the woman went out for a meal after she sent him ideas about how to improve the company.

Musk and the woman kissed after the two bonded over their love of “Star Wars,” according to the report.

A year later, Musk arranged for the woman to be flown to a resort in Sicily where the two met, the Journal claimed. Musk was in Sicily attending a conference sponsored by Google.

The woman’s passport was in another city, so Musk made arrangements for a friend of the woman to bring it to her on an early morning domestic flight, according to the Journal.

The woman was then booked for a first-class flight to London and then a private jet to Italy, it was reported.

In 2017, Musk offered the woman a role on his executive staff.

SpaceX is Musk’s rocket-building firm whose Starship shuttle is seen in the above file photo. SPACEX/AFP via Getty Images

Former SpaceX staffers thought it was odd that someone so young was offered a high-profile position close to the boss, according to the report.

After she moved to Los Angeles from New York, the woman accepted an invitation from Musk for drinks.

Her friends told the Journal that Musk came on to her and touched her breast.

One of her friends said the woman recalled Musk telling her: “Oh, I’m so bad. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Elon tried to rekindle our relationship prior to my employment, and I rejected the advance. While there was some initial awkwardness, it was nothing out of the ordinary after a rejection,” the woman said in a sworn affidavit provided to the Journal by a law firm which also represents Musk and Tesla.

According to the Journal, the woman, who denied ever having a “romantic relationship” with Musk, said she was unhappy at SpaceX because she had no authority and that she also had trouble getting other executives to take her ideas seriously.

The situation got so bad that on several occasions she would hide in the bathroom on company grounds, the Journal reported.

In the affidavit provided to the Journal, the woman said that her feelings about the job at SpaceX “were completely unrelated to any romantic or personal interactions with Elon Musk.”

“I came into a very difficult role as a newcomer into an established company,” she said in the affidavit.

Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX, accused a subordinate of having an affair with her husband, according to the Journal. REUTERS

As she struggled to establish herself in the company, she would visit Musk at his home after the boss frequently texted her, according to a friend.

“Come by!” Musk would text her. When she didn’t respond, he would continue texting.

“Look, it’s either me or 6am [exercise] :)” he wrote on one occasion.

On another occasion, Musk texted: “Just finished the Model 3 production call. It’s def going to be hell for several more months.”

“Are you coming over? If not, I will probably tranq out. Too stressed to sleep naturally,” Musk wrote to her.

When Musk’s texts went unanswered, he wrote: “Probably best if we don’t see each other.”

The next morning, the woman texted back to him, writing: “Oh man. I’m sorry, I’d already fallen asleep. I’ve been a late night person most of my life but have been trying to switch over because it seems responsible. Tbh. Sorry I crashed last night.”

Later that same day, the girl confided in a friend that she had “mild [social] anxiety resulting from imposter syndrome” which “definitely makes this job harder.”

Musk has two children with Shivon Zilis, one of his employees at SpaceX and Neuralink. AP

“And that’s definitely exacerbated by Elon’s behavior,” her friend responded. The woman replied: “So badly.”

She said Musk displayed a lack of interest in her job, which made it more difficult, according to the Journal.

The awkwardness with Musk eventually led her to leave Musk’s executive staff. She was reassigned to another role in which she reported to another engineer, according to the Journal.

In 2019, when her manager was part of mass layoffs, she left the company.

In 2013, a woman who worked at SpaceX left the company and then reappeared with a lawyer.

She alleged that Musk had asked her on several occasions to have his babies, according to the Journal.

Musk, the father of 10 children including twins that he shared with another SpaceX employee, Shivon Zilis, has often spoke about the need to boost birth rates in order to save the human population.

Zilis agreed to Musk’s offer to give birth to his children, who were conceived via artificial insemination. @shivon/X

After the woman declined Musk’s offer to have his children, the relationship between the two deteriorated, according to the Journal.

Musk would often complain about her job performance. He also reportedly denied her a raise.

The woman eventually left the company with an exit package work more than $1 million in stock and cash, the Journal reported.

A year later, Musk began a sexual relationship with another woman who would often spend 17-hour days working alongside the boss.

Before the relationship with Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s presient and chief operating officer, accused her of having an affair with her husband. She denied the allegation.

The woman alleged that when she went to human resources with Shotwell’s allegation, Shotwell retaliated against her by trying to get her removed from her position.

People close to the woman told the Journal that while Shotwell was working to get her fired, Musk brought her closer to him.

In 2022, it was reported that Musk allegedly exposed himself to a SpaceX flight attendant. AP

The relationship began while Musk was in the middle of divorce talks with British actress Talulah Riley.

But it ended weeks later when she confided in friends that she felt used and that Musk had no desire to be seen in public with her.

She left the company and was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement. In exchange, she was reportedly paid $85,000 for unpaid work that she did earlier for Tesla.

“The untruths, mischaracterizations, and revisionist history in your email paint a completely misleading narrative,” Shotwell told the Journal.

“I continue to be amazed by what this extraordinary group of people are achieving every day even amidst all the forces acting against us. And Elon is one of the best humans I know.”

In 2022, a SpaceX flight attendant accused Musk of exposing himself to her aboard one of his private jets in 2016.

The woman was later paid $250,000 to settle the claim.

News of the allegation and the subsequent settlement was first reported by Business Insider.

"It appears to be a payoff": Expert says Kushner's Saudi cash an "egregious" national security worry

Charles R. Davis

SALON
Wed, June 12, 2024 

Jared Kushner John Lamparski/Getty Images

Based on his prior experience and demonstrated abilities, Jared Kushner never should have landed a job in the White House. Before joining the Trump administration, Kushner was best known as his father’s son — a real estate mogul and disbarred attorney who gifted his child control over the family’s portfolio after being convicted of multiple felonies — whose greatest accomplishment was purchasing a New York City skyscraper for $1.8 billion just months before the housing market crashed, slashing the property's value in half.

To be fair, Kushner made the best of his time in public service and appears to have turned it all around. Although he did not achieve peace in Israel and Palestine, Kushner was able to establish strategically important friendships with future benefactors in the Persian Gulf, a region he visited no fewer than 10 times on the taxpayer’s dime. A day before the January 6 insurrection, he was in Saudi Arabia for an event marking the restoration of relations between the kingdom and its rival, Qatar.

Out of office two weeks later, Kushner started up an investment firm, Affinity Partners, that quickly attracted big-time investors from the Middle East, despite the 43-year-old owner’s lack of experience running such an operation and a Google-able record of botching his only major investment decision.


As The New York Times reported in April, Kushner’s investment fund, valued at $3 billion, “is financed almost entirely from overseas investors with whom he worked when he served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House.”

Some two-thirds of that money has come from Saudi Arabia’s state-run Public Investment Fund, whose own advisers deemed Kushner’s fund “unsatisfactory in all aspects” only to be overruled by a board that includes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man who ordered the killing of U.S.-Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi when Trump was in office and who Kushner today describes as a “visionary leader.” The other third? Much of it reportedly comes from other sovereign wealth funds run by the likes of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

That arrangement — Kusner receiving billions of dollars from friends he made as a government employee — has attracted scrutiny from Democrats and watchdog groups, who suspect that Charles Kushner’s son (turned Ivanka Trump’s husband) might be doing so well for reasons that are not entirely above board.

In a letter sent Wednesday, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., demanded that Kushner and company answer questions about their relations with foreign powers and suggested that what he knows so far points to their investments being part of an influence operation.

“Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds,” Wyden wrote in the letter, addressed to Affinity Partners’ chief financial officer, Lauren Key. In addition to the investments themselves, Kushner’s firm charges a 2% fee to manage the states’ assets, generating at least $80 million from the Saudis alone.

It all adds up to “an appearance that Affinity’s investors are motivated not by commercial interests of seeking a return on investment,” Wyden wrote, “but rather by strategic considerations of foreign nationals seeking to funnel money to U.S. individuals with personal connections to former President Trump.”

Since being awarded billions by governments he worked with — Kushner arranged it so Trump’s first state visit was to Saudi Arabia — the former president’s son-in-law has used at least some of the money to pursue projects that Trump himself was interested in. Earlier this year, Kushner scored a major real estate deal in Belgrade, Serbia, under which Affinity Partners will have the exclusive rights to build a luxury compound on the site of a former army headquarters that was bombed by NATO in 1999. Trump had wanted to build a hotel on the same site, where Kushner has agreed to finance a memorial on behalf of the pro-Russia Serbian government that will mark the NATO campaign, which came as Belgrade’s forces were committing war crimes in neighboring Kosovo.

Virginia Canter, former chief ethics counsel for the Treasury Department and now an attorney with the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said an investigation of Kushner is not just “long overdue” but “vital for our national security.”

“It’s pretty apparent that he made and was involved in decisions that were unusually favorable to the Saudis and then he turned around, within weeks of leaving the White House, and was engaging in negotiations with them to obtain a $2 billion investment,” Canter told Salon. “It just raises all kinds of national security concerns for a former government official at that level – a former White House official — who never qualified, legitimately, for a security clearance.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Even before he left office, there were concerns about Kushner’s ties to sketchy interests. He was indeed denied a security clearance, The New York Times reported, after officials “raised questions about this and his family’s real estate business’s ties to foreign governments and investors”; he only obtained one after his father-in-law intervened. While in government, and following the murder of Khashoggi inside of Saudi Arabia’s Turkish embassy, Kushner, by then on a first-name basis with the Saudi leader who ordered the killing, “became the prince’s most important defender in side the White House,” per the Times.

“Every action he took seemed driven by what was going to come after he left office,” Canter said, noting that Kushner’s Trump-ordered security clearance granted him access to valuable, top-secret information. While he’s not the first former government official who has sought to cash in, Kushner is one of the few to completely disregard the traditional cooling off period (the other: former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, whose investment firm is also backed by Riyadh).

“It’s one of the most egregious situations I’ve ever seen in decades of working in the federal government as an ethics official,” Canter said. “It appears to be a payoff as much as a potential investment,” she said, and also something of a purchase: buying Trump’s continued support for the Saudi government, which has also paid the former president millions of dollars to host its Liv Golf events. By enriching Kushner, and consequently Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, the Saudis have increased the potential cost, personally, for ever breaking with them politically.

“That,” Canter said, “may be a way of keeping Trump, in or out of office, on the Saudi side.”

Opinion
Democrats Are Finally Coming for Jared Kushner and His Shady Firm

Talia Jane

THE NEW REPUBLIC
Wed, June 12, 2024 


Jared Kushner’s Saudi Arabia–funded investment firm is finally being seriously examined. Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, seeking information about the company’s investments—after it received $2 billion of its $2.5 billion in investments from Saudi Arabia.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden is leading the investigation, noting the peculiarities of nepobaby Kushner’s involvement in business dealings he has next to no experience doing. In a letter Wednesday asking Kushner’s firm to respond to queries about its investors, Wyden wrote:

Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds.

Virginia Canter, former Treasury Department chief ethics counsel, told Salon that Kushner’s shady business dealings with Saudi Arabia, so soon after he and his father-in-law left the White House, raise serious national security concerns. “It’s one of the most egregious situations I’ve ever seen in decades of working in the federal government as an ethics official,” she said. “It appears to be a payoff as much as a potential investment.”

Kushner’s firm launched in 2021 and immediately received a majority of its funds from Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, with a whopping 99 percent coming from foreign sources. Kushner defended the flood of cash by pointing out that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s fund also invests in Nintendo, Uber, and Microsoft—which is more of an insult to those companies than it is a vouch for Kushner.

“The Saudi PIF’s decision to invest $2 billion in Affinity so soon after Kushner’s departure from the Trump White House raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder of journalist and American citizen Jamal Khashoggi,” Wyden wrote.

In 2018, MBS oversaw the brutal assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump’s White House paid no mind to the murder, instead releasing a shocking statement expressing support for Saudi Arabia and sowing doubt that MBS ordered Khashoggi’s murder, despite a CIA analysis finding that was certainly the case. Trump himself has curious ties to MBS, which during his presidency raised concerns of foreign influence.

This isn’t the first time Congress has sought answers about Kushner’s firm. In 2023, the stench of corruption was so putrid, Congress subpoenaed the company over its ties to Saudi Arabia, with even Republican James Comer saying Kushner’s Saudi blood money “crossed the line of ethics.”


Senate Democrats Launch Probe Of Foreign Payments To Jared Kushner’s Firm

Arthur Delaney

HUFFPOST
Wed, June 12, 2024 


Democrats are increasing their scrutiny of Jared Kushner’s business activities.

Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, for details about its investors on Wednesday, including the $2 billion it received from the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund in 2021.

“Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds,” Wyden wrote.

A panel that screens investments for the Saudi sovereign wealth fund warned against investing with Kushner, given his inexperience in finance, but the full board, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, overruled the panel, The New York Times reported in 2022.

Kushner advised Trump on foreign affairs, guided his administration to embrace Saudi Arabia as an ally, and remained in close contact with the crown prince even after he was implicated in the dismembering of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The Saudi PIF’s decision to invest $2 billion in Affinity so soon after Kushner’s departure from the Trump White House raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder of journalist and American citizen Jamal Khashoggi,” Wyden wrote.

Wyden’s letter asked Affinity Partners for details about its seeding investments, the investments made by the firm, as well as the fees it has received, and the amount Kushner has been paid. The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment made through its website.

Wyden’s letter represents an escalation of Democratic scrutiny of Kushner’s business activities, which have been controversial from the start. Even House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.), an aggressive defender of Donald Trump, said last year that he thought Kushner “crossed the line of ethics” with his Saudi deal.

Comer has overseen Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, which has largely focused on business deals by the president’s son. Republicans have said he improperly traded on his father’s former position as vice president during the Obama administration.

Democrats on Comer’s committee have highlighted the millions Trump’s business received from foreign governments while he was president and also questioned Kushner’s Saudi payday. Unlike Wyden, however, House Democrats don’t have subpoena power because Democrats don’t have a majority in the chamber.
Related...

Ex-Obama Adviser Spots Jared Kushner's Corruption 'Hiding In Plain Sight'


Jamie Raskin Calls For Hearing On 'Influence Peddling' By Jared Kushner


Jared Kushner Praises 'Very Valuable' Potential Of Gaza's 'Waterfront Property'



Wyden probes Kushner firm for investment details

Lauren Irwin

THE HILL
Wed, June 12, 2024

Wyden probes Kushner firm for investment details


Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) launched an investigation Wednesday into former President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his investment firm, Affinity Partners, over details regarding its investments in Saudi Arabia.

In a letter to Affinity Partners Chief Financial Officer Lauren Key, Wyden said its concerning that several Middle Eastern governments, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are using funds managed by the company and creating “significant conflicts of interest and potential counterintelligence risks.”

“These arrangements also raise concerns that Affinity’s exclusively foreign funded private investment funds are being exploited as a loophole by Mr. Kushner and other former U.S. government officials as a means to avoid complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act and other U.S. laws requiring U.S. persons to disclose payments form foreign governments,” Wyden wrote in the letter.

The chair is asking for the company to provide a list of all investors in funds managed by Affinity since its inception in 2021. For each investor, Wyden asked for Affinity to disclose the amount invested in funds it manages, total amount of fees the investment firm has been paid, and the annual rates of return, as well.

Building off a report by The New York Times that found Affinity disclosed that 99 percent of its assets were attributable to non-U.S. people or entities, Wyden is asking why that is the case.

One of Wyden’s asks specifically names Kushner, requesting the company detail how much Affinity paid him from 2021 to 2023, in not only salary but bonuses, other compensation, dividends and other distributions associated with the company.

The senator also asked for a list of all the shareholders and the number of shares each person owns, among several other requests he made.

During his time in the Trump administration, Kushner oversaw Middle East policy. He secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia six months after leaving the White House and has come under criticism for the potential political influence.

Kushner has defended himself and his firm’s action about the allegations of conflict of interest.

The Hill has reached out to Affinity and the attorneys representing Kushner for comment.