Elon Musk enlisted help from senior executives at each of his companies to clean up after his personal attack against a British cave diver last year, and bristled at their initial suggestion for how to apologize, according to newly released court documents.
Sam Teller, a director in the office of the CEO at Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Co. and Neuralink, sought feedback from a team of executives, lawyers and advisors inside and outside the companies on what Musk should do after baselessly calling the diver a pedophile in. The insult, lobbed after Musk’s attempt to help save Thai children trapped in a cave was rejected, sent Tesla’s stock tumbling and prompted the group to suggest that Musk take a break from Twitter.
“After sleeping on this, I’m not happy about the suggested approach,” Musk wrote back to Teller, in an email included in the court documents released Monday. The CEO said “it would have been particularly foolish and craven” to apologize the night after Tesla’s shares declined, as it “would simply have been dismissed as a disingenuous and cowardly attempt to restore the stock price.
In the filings, Unsworth calls Musk “a thin-skinned billionaire who is obsessed with his public image and who has a history of vindictively and intentionally ignoring truth to maintain that PR-created image.”Musk’s lawyer in the defamation suit, Alex Spiro, said in an email that the case is “nothing but a money grab” by Unsworth and accused him of profiting off the Thai cave rescue. “The truth of his motivations and actions will come out soon enough,” Spiro wrote.
Unsworth’s legal team has deposed Musk and members of his closest inner circle, including Jared Birchall, the head of his family office; Teller, his chief of staff; and Steve Davis, the president of Boring Co.In the email sent to Musk in July of last year, Teller sent a draft outline of an apology for Musk to send out.
Teller advised that Musk begin the message addressed to his employees: “I understand that my recent behavior has probably embarrassed you and I’m sorry.” Teller suggested that Musk say he understood people wouldn’t stop attacking him on Twitter, but that he would do his best to “tune them out.”
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