Elon Musk claims risk of assassination is 'quite significant' after 'Twitter Files' release

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said in a weekend chat that the risk of his assassination is “quite significant” after releasing internal communications about political censorship to independent journalists.

On Friday, independent journalist Matt Taibbi released a batch of internal documents provided to him by Musk exposing conversations about how Twitter came to scrub the New York Post story about alleged corruption detailed on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Then headed by CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter banned the New York Post’s account in Oct. 2020 after they published emails from a laptop Biden left at a New Jersey repair shop showing business ties between Hunter and his father, then-candidate Joe Biden.

Though just a portion of records, they detail how efforts to censor thought on the platform began, then accelerated during the last presidential campaign. The screenshots seem to suggest Twitter executives chose to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story despite having little evidence they were Russian disinformation, as claimed.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO held a two-hour Twitter Spaces conference call about the “Twitter Files” on Saturday, where he said he would definitely not “be doing any open-air car parades, let me put it that way.”

“Frankly the risk of something bad happening to me, or even literally being shot, is quite significant,” Musk added.

“It’s not that hard to kill somebody if you wanted to, so hopefully they don’t, and fate smiles upon the situation with me and it does not happen… There’s definitely some risk there.”

He also announced a second “installment” of the Twitter Files was coming from Taibbi and former New York Times writer Bari Weiss but did provide any more details.

Musk, who has claimed to be a “free speech absolutist,” had vowed to fully disclose what led to the platform’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden emails.