Nicole Shanahan has denied that she had an affair with Elon Musk.
The 51-year-old business magnate was reported by the Wall Street Journal to have had a “brief affair” with Nicole, 37, last December which caused her to split from Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
However, Shanahan has now denied the claims altogether and described any suggestion of an affair as an “outright lie“.
Shanahan’s lawyer Bryan Freedman told TMZ this week: “Make no mistake, any suggestion that Nicole had an affair with Elon Musk is not only an outright lie but also defamatory.”
Her statement comes just days after the Tesla founder - who split from pop singer Grimes in September 2021 but welcomed now-7-month-old daughter Exa Dark with her when the affair was said to have happened - also denied the claims and insisted that he is still friends with Brin.
He tweeted: “This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night! I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around.
“Nothing romantic. Haven’t even had sex in ages (sigh). WSJ has run so many bs hit pieces on me and Tesla I’ve lost count! It’s embarrassing for them, frankly.
“They once wrote an article saying FBI was about to arrest me, so I called FBI to ask what’s up and they said WSJ article was total bs. Just more shortseller fud” (sic).
Musk - who was close friends with Brin for a number of years and is thought to have borrowed around $500 000 from him during the 2008 financial crisis - and his fellow multi-billionaire were allegedly no longer on speaking terms and it was claimed that Brin had intended to sell his personal investments in Musk’s companies.
In January 2022, Brin, who was also previously married to Anne Wojcicki and has Benji, 13, and 11-year-old Chloe with her while Musk has a total of 10 children from various relationships, cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the divorce and noted that December 15, 2021 was their official date of separation.