Allegations surfaced against Elon Musk recently, and her employees were quick to come to his defense. Gwynne Shotwell, the chief operating officer and president of SpaceX made a statement, speaking against the sexual harassment allegations directed at her boss published in Insider magazine.
In an email to employees, Shotwell wrote that the allegations of sexual misconduct against Elon Musk are ‘out of character’ for the Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also going through a $44 billion Twitter takeover.
Adding to her statement further, Shotwell said that she personally believed that the allegations of misconduct are untrue, and that she doesn’t speak so because she works for Musk buy because she has been in close contact with Musk for over twenty years and never seen or heard of anything close to the nature of the recent allegations.
The allegations made in this explosive Insider report were published in May, where it was said that Musk had allegedly exposed himself to a flight attendant in 2016. He had also offered the flight attendant to buy her a horse if she gave him an erotic massage. According to the report, SpaceX had also settled the claim for $250,000 in 2018.
Musk has also been vocal to deny these allegations loud and clear. He said that all these false claims are politically motivated. He also asked the public to view these allegations from a political lens, and that that is a standard practice to discredit anyone who is ‘fighting for a good future’ and the public right to free speech. Musk tweeted these statements after the bombshell Insider report surfaced on the Internet.
The entire fiasco arose when Elon Musk was amidst a chaotic buyout of Twitter. Before offering his price to buyout the micro tweeting platform, Musk had laid out the entire plan he had for the social media platform. He envisioned it to be a place for free speech, with utmost transparency during content moderation. He had also said that the Twitter algorithms would be made open-source. Among his various plans to make Twitter a beacon of free speech, he also said that would lift the ban on ex Us President Donald Trump which was placed on him after the January 6th insurrection.
More recently, Musk also said that he is putting the Twitter bid on hold at the moment as details of the presence of bots on twitter were disclosed. He said that he is still committed to the buyout, though.