- The White House could bring the full force of the U.S. government to bear on anti–Elon Musk protesters found to have destroyed his carmaker’s assets, following a spate of attacks large and small targeting Tesla.
President Donald Trump warned protesters targeting Elon Musk that his administration will treat any attacks on Tesla company property as an act of domestic terrorism against the United States.
Standing on the White House lawn next to a line of Teslas and flanked by Musk nodding in agreement, Trump vowed to bring the full power of his office to bear on anyone breaking the law in an effort to interfere with his administration’s unofficial cost-cutter in chief.
“Those people are going to go through a big problem when we catch them,” Trump told reporters. “They’re harming a great American company.”
Tesla has become a lightning rod for anti-Musk sentiment, after its CEO and largest shareholder bankrolled Trump’s campaign to the tune of a quarter billion dollars.
In exchange, Musk has become a senior unofficial advisor who has led the charge to slash federal spending but is unaccountable to congressional oversight.
Since he is not a cabinet member, he has been allowed to retain his corporate holdings. This creates numerous possible conflicts of interest—for example, when the Trump-directed FCC enacts decisions beneficial to Musk’s SpaceX.
‘We already know who some of them are’
Musk’s relationship with Trump and his role in the administration has sparked protests in several U.S. cities by groups including “Tesla Takedown.”
There have also been multiple cases where it appears that company property has been destroyed by politically motivated actors rather than by common criminals.
Instances include cars spray-painted with swastikas, burned out Superchargers, and vandalized showrooms. One transgender individual, possibly acting in response to Musk’s anti-trans views, has already been arrested by Colorado law enforcement in one incident.
On Tuesday, Trump said his executive branch, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, will be keeping a watchful eye.
Trump likely doesn’t want a repeat of the ugly scenes of lawlessness that marked his first term, when he had to deploy elite border patrol tactical units to quell widespread violence in Portland, Ore., following the George Floyd riots.
“We got a lot of cameras up. We already know who some of them are,” Trump said.
Legal uncertainty
Domestic terrorism has been an issue America has faced for decades, such as in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh carried out the bomb attack of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. But typically it is associated with violent extremism or hate crimes rather than vandalism or property destruction.
Following the 9/11 attack, Congress amended the federal criminal code known as Title 18 U.S.C. to include a dedicated definition for domestic terrorism under Section 2331(5). It classifies it as crimes dangerous to human life that appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or influence the policy or conduct of the government.
At the same time, however, there is no specific charge on the statute books for prosecuting and penalizing domestic terrorism as such. So public prosecutors—both state and federal—can throw the book at potential offenders using a wide variety of charges.
In the aftermath of events like the anti-Semitic mass murder at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, legal experts have been calling for clarity on this issue.
“The lack of a comprehensive federal statutory approach to domestic terrorism has spurred a push for (and a responsive pushback against) reform,” wrote the Harvard Law Review in May 2023.
