Elon Musk has withheld “substantial” financial support for the son he reportedly fathered with a 26-year-old MAGA influencer after the mother sued for sole custody, her lawyer said.
Ashley St. Clair another in February that she had given birth five months earlier to a son and that Musk was the father. The two had begun a romantic relationship sometime around May 2023 and conceived a child in January 2024, she said.
Musk did not publicly acknowledge the claims, but soon after her announcement, St. Clair filed a petition to gain sole custody of the child and to recognize the billionaire’s paternity.
Her filing included messages from Musk that appeared to acknowledge the child was his. “I want to knock you up again,” he wrote in one. Another said, “Well, we do have a legion of kids to make.”
Now, the 53-year-old Republican megadonor and adviser to President Donald Trump has “financially retaliated” against his son over the suit, St. Clair’s lawyer team told People magazine.
“Elon Musk has financially retaliated against his own child and reduced his financial support substantially and unilaterally,” Karen Rosenthal, Bikel Rosenthal & Schanfield LLP said in a statement. “He did this after Ashley was forced to bring this matter to court, when he refused to respond to her many private attempts to resolve this matter without publicity.”
He also filed an emergency application that would prevent St. Clair from discussing his actions—all while claiming to be a free speech warrior, the legal team said.
A representative for Musk did not respond to People’s request for comment. The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
In her original complaint, St. Clair wrote that Musk had not been present for the birth of her son—listed only by his initials as R.S.C—and had met him only three times. He has also had no involvement in his care or upbringing, she wrote.
The world’s richest man has fathered 14 known children with four women.
Last month, after Musk was accused on his social media platform X of “abandoning” a 5-month-old and refusing to pay child support for three of his kids, he wrote in a post that he had “always paid extremely generous child support and without any coercion to do so. Sometimes the mother asked for money vastly in excess of what the children could possibly need, so that needed to be adjudicated.”
