Nicole Shanahan Breaks Silence Over Allegation She Had Affair With Elon Musk

Nicole Shanahan, the estranged wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has responded to a report that alleged that she had an affair with Elon Musk.

By Corinne Heller Jul 27, 2022 6:19 PMTags
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Nicole Shanahan, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, denies she had an affair with Elon Musk.

On July 27, her lawyer released a statement in response to a Wall Street Journal report that cited unidentified sources as saying she had engaged in a brief affair with the Tesla CEO last December while separated from Brin, a claim Musk himself also recently denied.

Shanahan's attorney, Bryan Freedman, told NBC News, "Make no mistake, any suggestion that Nicole had an affair with Elon Musk is not only an outright lie but also defamatory."

In its July 24 report, the WSJ cited its sources as saying that the alleged affair prompted Brin to file for divorce from Shanahan earlier this year and also ended the tech billionaires' long friendship. In response to the article, Musk 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."

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Musk, the richest person in the world (per Forbes), also wrote that he works "crazy hours, so there just isn't much time for shenanigans."

Following his comments, a WSJ spokesperson told E! News, "We are confident in our sourcing, and we stand by our reporting."

E! News has reached out to reps for Shanahan and Brin for comment and has not heard back.

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Brin, the seventh richest person in the world, filed for divorce from Shanahan in January after three years of marriage, citing "irreconcilable differences," according to the WSJ. His lawyer declined to comment about the newspaper's report about the alleged affair, the outlet said.

On July 27, Elon Musk tweeted, "I talked to Sergey yesterday and he says neither he nor anyone he knows has talked to WSJ." Brin has not responded to his remarks.

(E! and NBC News are part of the NBCUniversal family.)

DailyMail.com was first to report Shanahan's denial.

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