Ex-Tesla exec checked Twitter to see if Elon Musk saying ‘dumb stuff’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk.Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

• Tesla‘s former head of human resources said on Tuesday that she would sometimes check Twitter to ensure CEO Elon Musk “was not tweeting dumb stuff,” Bloomberg reports.
• The reported comment from former HR head Gabrielle Toledano, who joined the company in May 2017 and confirmed her resignation earlier this month after a leave of absence, came during a National Labor Relations Board hearing in Oakland.
• Toledano declined Business Insider’s request for comment.
• Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla’s former head of human resources said on Tuesday that she would sometimes check Twitter to ensure CEO Elon Musk “was not tweeting dumb stuff,” Bloomberg reports.

The reported comment from former HR head Gabrielle Toledano, who joined the company in May 2017 and confirmed her resignation earlier this month after a leave of absence, came during a National Labor Relations Board hearing in Oakland regarding allegations that the company has interfered with union organizing activities and retaliated against pro-union employees. The company has denied those allegations, according to Bloomberg.

Toledano declined Business Insider’s request for comment. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk is known for being unusually candid on Twitter compared to other CEOs, but he has become increasingly combative on the social network this year, lashing out at critics and reporters and spurring questions about his judgment when using the site.

His tweets have attracted lawsuits, as well as reported investigations from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. The investigations reportedly concern the accuracy of statements Musk made in August via Twitter in which he said he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the funding to do so. 

Reports that emerged after the tweet, and a statement from Musk, suggested that, at the time of the tweet, he did not have legally binding agreements in place that would provide enough funding to convert Tesla into a private company. Musk later said that Tesla would remain public but said he believed there was “more than enough funding” to take the company private.

Vernon Unsworth, a British diver whom Musk accused of being a pedophile via Twitter, sued Musk for defamation earlier this month. In July, Musk called Unsworth a pedophile in a tweet and said he would bet money to back his accusation after Unsworth said the miniature submarine Musk designed and sent to Thailand to help with the rescue of a boys’ soccer team and their coach would have been ineffective and was merely a publicity stunt. Musk later apologized to Unsworth, who helped with the rescue, and deleted the tweet.

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