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More controversy has arrived for Elon Musk, as news broke of one of his companies paying a massive settlement to keep an incident of sexual misconduct involving him quiet.
According to published reports, SpaceX allegedly paid a former flight attendant $250,000 to guarantee that she wouldn’t sue the company or speak out against it after Musk propositioned her for sex. The incident reportedly occurred in late 2016, according to accounts shared by a friend of the victim to Insider.
The flight attendant worked as a crew member during a SpaceX corporate flight and was asked by Musk to give him a massage. (The story notes that she was encouraged to obtain a masseuse license by the company.) During the massage, Musk exposed his genitals to her and propositioned her while touching her leg, offering to buy the attendant a horse if she’d “do more”. After her refusal, the flight attendant was “really upset” afterward, and her friend stated that SpaceX cut down the number of flights she’d work after the incident which she saw as retaliation.
Further investigation showed that the flight attendant went to the HR department, and complained about the treatment. The company reportedly went to a mediator with her complaint, and then gave her a severance agreement that included the payment as well as for instructions not to speak about the incident or to say anything negative about Musk, SpaceX, or Tesla. The victim’s friend didn’t sign any non-disclosure agreement.
When initially contacted by Insider, Musk said: “If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light.” He opted to give the outlet no further comment but instead went to Twitter on Wednesday (May 18th) to claim that he would be the victim of political attacks, seemingly to get ahead of the pending story. Insider has reported that representatives for the billionaire have yet to respond to further inquiries. Musk did however claim that the friend quoted in the article “is a far-left activist/actress in LA with a major political axe to grind” in a response tweet after the article was published.