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This is the kind of story that feels like a big gang of media nerds got totally wasted and played several rounds of crazy libs, but apparently it’s only 2022 driving home the point where we’re actually living in the strangest of timelines.
Two reporters who were kicked off Twitter by by Elon Musk ban Hammer tracked down his alleged stalker, got local cops to confirm there is “no connection” to @ElonJet, but the stalker himself is a truly bizarre and disturbing person.
A main storyline of Musk’s chaotic reign as “Chief Twit” has been his struggle with Jack Sweeneythe 20-year-old college student at the University of Central Florida who ran the @ElonJet Twitter account, which tracked Musk’s private jet, along with several other accounts tracking the jets of other billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and so on.
Musk also claimed that a “stalker” had recently jumped on the hood of the car his son was traveling in, posting a video of the alleged stalker and showing the man’s license plate.
Twitter recently banned the @ElonJet account and Sweeney’s personal account, then suspended a group of journalists whom Musk accused of “doxxing” by sharing his “real-time location” or – as the often dramatic Tesla CEO and SpaceX expressed — “assassination coordinates”.
Among the reporters caught up in suspensions, or – as we often dramatic media types put it – the “Thursday Night Massacre”, was Drew Harwell of washington post🇧🇷
Harwell and the other banned journalists disputed Musk’s accusations that they had doxxed him or shared his real-time location, and Harwell even managed to confront Musk about it directly (albeit briefly) in a Twitter Space on Friday.
Harwell’s account was restored this weekend, along with several other reporters, but notable exceptions remained suspended. (Update: Harwell’s account is no longer suspendedbut remains blockedand he still can’t tweet, Mediaite confirmed.)
On Saturday, Harwell’s WaPo co-worker taylor lorenz tweeted to Musk that the two were working on a story and sent several emails to him for comment, but did not receive a response.
Then Lorenz’s Twitter account was suspended.
Musk claimed it was a “temporary suspension”, Lorenz shared an email saying the suspension was permanent, but it was restored on the platform.
Lorenz’s account was apparently blocked under a retroactive application of a new policy that restricts the promotion of competing social media platforms. CNN anchor by Jim Acosta account was blocked for the same reason, also retroactively.
Musk has since apologized and promised that any major new policy changes will be dealt with by a vote and has posted a new poll asking whether he should step down as head of Twitter.
On Sunday night, Harwell and Lorenz posted the article they were trying to reach Musk for comment on.
Titled “Elon Musk blamed a stalker on a Twitter account. Police see no link,” the article reported that the alleged stalking incident took place “at a gas station 26 miles from Los Angeles International Airport and 23 hours after the @ElonJet account last located the jet’s whereabouts ”, facts that “cast doubt” on Musk’s accusations.
As Harwell and Lorenz reported, the LAPD “has yet to find a link” between the accused stalker and @ElonJet. They identified the driver of the car as Brandon Collado using the video that Musk tweeted and depicted him as an UberEats driver who rented the car in question from car-sharing service Turo. Collado confirmed that he was the person in Musk’s video and shared his own videos of the incident with reporters.
Here’s where it gets weird.
In his interviews with the PublishCollado “acknowledged that she has an interest in Musk and is the mother of two children by Musk, the musician known as Grimeswhose real name is Claire Elise Boucher”, and made “various bizarre and baseless claims”.
Boucher, the mother of Musk’s two-year-old son X Æ A-Xii (he usually refers to the child as “X”), lives near the gas station where the incident allegedly took place.
Among Collado’s troubling comments to the Publish it was his beliefs that “Boucher was sending him coded messages through his Instagram posts; that Musk was monitoring his location in real time; and that Musk could take control of Uber Eats to prevent it from taking delivery orders.
Several reporters – including several arrested on the week’s suspensions – posted that the LAPD had confirmed that it had not received a police report on the incident. According PublishSouth Pasadena police officers arrived on the scene shortly after the incident, questioned Collado and said they would file a police report, but he told the Publish that no one from the police had contacted him.
Stalking is a “pervasive problem” in Los Angeles due to all of the city’s famous inhabitants, and the LAPD has a special unit dedicated to the subject. Marc Maderoan LAPD detective with this unit told the Publish that they had investigated a man accused of stalking Boucher and whether or not Collado was that man or connected in any way, but had yet to make a determination.
Madero said his investigations uncovered no evidence showing that Collado had used @ElonJet, although stalkers often take advantage of “open source searches of a targeted individual”.
“Nothing would surprise me,” he added.
Read the full report on washington post🇧🇷
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