Jess Hardiman
Ashley St. Clair hit headlines earlier this year when she claimed she had given birth to Elon Musk’s child, but now she’s dropped an arguably even bigger bombshell.
"Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world,” she revealed in February.
"Elon Musk is the father. I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause."
While Musk – who has had at least 14 children with four women, including singer Grimes - chose not to respond to the claims at the time, he recently said he was ‘not against finding out’ if the child really is his.
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"Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year,” he said on Twitter.
St. Clair retaliated by alleging that Musk had previously ‘refused’ a paternity test.
Their ongoing battle has now been detailed in a new feature she’s done with the Wall Street Journal, which was shown a number of messages supposedly from Musk.
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According to the WSJ, Musk refers to his offspring as a ‘legion’ - a reference to the huge armies that were central to building out the Roman Empire.
During St. Clair’s pregnancy, he reportedly asked that they bring in other women to have even more of their children, and faster.
“To reach legion-level before the apocalypse,” he told her in a text message viewed by the WSJ, “We will need to use surrogates.”
It's alleged that he recruited prospective mothers via Twitter, before paying them off to buy their silence, according to St. Clair and a number of other people, along with texts and documents reviewed by the WSJ.
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When St. Clair wanted to prove that Musk was the father of her child, she had to go through his longtime fixer, Jared Birchall.
He advised that his boss is ‘very big-hearted', but that, when a mother of his child goes ‘the legal route... that always, always leads to a worse outcome for that woman than what it would have been otherwise’.
The documents and accounts of various people suggested that Musk’s advisers have threatened financial retribution to anyone pushing back on nondisclosure clauses of their agreements.
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“Privacy and confidentiality is the top of the list in every aspect of his life, every aspect, and his entire world is set up to be, like, a meritocracy,” Birchall told St. Clair, adding that benefits flow when ‘people do good work’.
In a call with Birchall, St. Clair said she had received a message from a woman Musk invited to have his baby, saying she was caught up in his ‘harem drama’.
Tyla has reached out to Elon Musk for comment.