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As protests — peaceful and violent — against Tesla (TSLA+5.27%) CEO Elon Musk show no signs of slowing down, the White House is stepping in.
“If you’re going to touch a Tesla, go to a dealership, do anything, you better watch out because we’re coming after you,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said last week on Fox Business Network (FOXA+0.88%). Her boss, President Donald Trump, has vowed that violent protestors are “going to go through hell.”
Musk has become an easy target for protestors thanks to his status as the biggest spender of the 2024 presidential election and legally murky role leading the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He’s also the richest man on the planet and the leader of several companies, including the social media platform X and SpaceX.
DOGE has courted controversy at every turn, drawing around two dozen lawsuits from groups looking to block its influence over the government, according to The New York Times. The group has taken credit for spending cuts that it did not carry out, aided in the removal of around 62,000 workers, and set the stage for the end of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“He’s a particularly heinous villain,” Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the progressive activist group Indivisible, which has helped organize some anti-Tesla protests, told The Guardian recently.
Tesla has borne the brunt of the outrage as hundreds of protestors across the world, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, protest against Musk. Projections for its first quarter sales have taken a hit, the stock has fallen about 39% in 2025, and a major auto show has removed Tesla from its lineup to avoid protests.
“We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly,” JPMorgan (JPM+2.25%) analyst Ryan Brinkman said in a recent research note.
Although Indivisible and Action Network — the organizer of the “Tesla Takedown” protests — emphasize nonviolent action, vandalism against Tesla property has ramped up. Tesla electric vehicles and dealerships have been vandalized across the U.S., as have Superchargers. There’s even a website that claims to expose the personal information of anyone who currently owns a Tesla.
Police in Portland, Oregon, said last week that at least seven shots were fired at a Tesla dealership, damaging three cars. An Oregon man has also been accused of trying to destroy property at a Tesla dealership in Salem on two separate occasions, including through the use of a Molotov cocktail and an AR-15-style rifle.
In Las Vegas, several Teslas were damaged after Molotov cocktails and a firearm were used to start a fire at a Tesla collision center. Authorities said the word “resist” was painted on the doors of the facility. “This level of violence is insane and deeply wrong,” Musk said of the incident.
“Was this terrorism? Was it something else? It certainly has some of the hallmarks that we might think — the writing on the wall, potential political agenda, an act of violence,” Spencer Evans, a special agent with the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, said at a press conference. “None of those factors are lost on us.”
U.S. officials, led by Trump and Bondi, have labeled “violent attacks on Tesla” as domestic terrorism. Congressional Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — a Tesla stockholder who bought thousands of dollars worth of shares last month — have called for the Justice Department to investigate the attacks.
Bondi said in a statement Tuesday that the Justice Department has charged several of the people allegedly behind such attacks with charges that bring at least a five-year mandatory sentence. The attorney general also said the Justice Department will investigate “those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”
Musk has claimed — without providing evidence — that an “investigation” showed anti-Tesla protests are being bankrolled by groups funded by ActBlue and Democratic megadonors, including George Soros and LinkedIn (MSFT+1.32%) co-founder Reid Hoffman. (Hoffman has denied those claims). Taylor-Greene ha publicly questioned whether there is a link between protests and “Democrat-leaning” non-government organizations.
“I think that you will find out that they’re paid by people that are very highly political on the left,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday, according to a transcript.