A report in the New York Post on Monday revealed the existence of a new 10-person FBI task force focused on vandalism and other activity aimed toward Tesla in response to the actions of Elon Musk.
Like Attorney General Pam Bondi’s re-announcement last week of old charges against people accused of targeting Tesla locations for vandalism and arson, today’s announcement didn’t come with specific new details. It did come with more statements calling the acts “domestic terrorism,” a line pushed by Musk, Trump, and others in recent weeks. FBI Director Kash Patel repeated the phrase while sharing the story on X, also saying, “The FBI has been investigating the increase in violent activity toward Tesla, and over the last few days, we have taken additional steps to crack down and coordinate our response.”
Unlike international groups branded as terrorism that the US government can bar support for, the US doesn’t have a similar formal designation for domestic terrorist groups. A recent report by Wired cites civil liberties experts who said possible effects of the designation could give law enforcement more surveillance authority over Musk protestors and possibly the ability to share information from investigations with Musk and Tesla.
CNBC reports that earlier on Monday, police said they’d found multiple “incendiary devices” at a Tesla showroom in Austin, Texas. The Post article also said the task force is “tracking” the “Tesla Takedown” mass protests scheduled for March 29th and looking into a “Dogeque.st” site that claimed to dox some Tesla owners and locations, which it said appears to be run out of Sao Tome, the second-smallest country in Africa. 404 Media reports that after going offline the same day it appeared, a version of the site has reappeared on the dark web.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
