The Secret Service has opened "enforcement proceedings" into Elon Musk's assassination post — a joke, he said — earlier this week about President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Musk, the Tesla CEO and owner of X, responded Sunday to a tweet about the thwarted assassination attempt on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with his own post that read, "And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala???"
Musk subsequently deleted the post and tried to explain it away with a series of new posts.
"Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don't know the context and the delivery is plain text," read one.
Bloomberg, through Freedom of Information Act requests to the Secret Service's Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division, Office of Protective Operations, and Office of Investigations, reported it received a response saying Musk's post was "compiled for law enforcement purposes" and withheld because "disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings."
The agency "is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk," Nate Herring, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, told Bloomberg. "As a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence. We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees."
However, it is not likely to result in action, according to Bloomberg.
Former Dukes of Hazzard actor John Schneider called for President Biden and his son, Hunter, to be hanged in a post on X last year. The Secret Service deemed that a "veiled threat" and never interviewed Schneider, Bloomberg reported.
"The worst that will likely happen if the Secret Service pays a visit to Musk is he'll be inconvenienced, and he'll have to prove he doesn't pose an imminent threat to President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris," wrote Bloomberg's FOIA Files.