Tesla whistleblower's lawyer: my client may have been effectively swatted

Enlarge / A Tesla Motor Inc. Modelcle is displayed outside the company's Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, U.S., on Tuesday, July 26, 2016.
Troy Harvey/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A lawyer representing Martin Tripp has released a 10-page police report that he says raises new questions concerning a purported June 20 shooting threat to the Tesla Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada, where the technician worked until he was fired on June 15. The document was first reported by Bloomberg.

A month ago, Tesla sued Tripp for alleged trade secrets violations, and he has recently countersued, claiming that he has been defamed.

The report shows that a call expressing vague concern over what Tripp apparently might do, was somehow translated to law enforcement as a direct violent attack against the Nevada facility.

"How did it go from the call center to a very serious terrorist threat?" Stuart Meissner, one of Tripp’s attorneys, told Ars late Wednesday evening.

“I think that’s a question that Tesla is going to have to answer in this litigation,” Will Fischbach, another one of Tripp’s lawyers, told Ars.

Meissner, who obtained the report from the Storey County Sheriff's Office under a state public records request, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that Tripp may have even been set up.

I present the “GigaGate” Police Reports Re the Tesla Giga Factory Terrorist Threat Incident & what may turn out to B the “SWATing” of our client.
We have asked to reopen the investigation as to the source of the reported “threat.” Judge for yourself https://t.co/SYKpcQfjcl

— Stuart D. Meissner (@StuartMeissner) August 1, 2018

A twisted tale

The initial shooting report story, which Tesla told Ars at the time, was that an anonymous male caller apparently called Tesla on June 20 and told a Gigafactory call center staffer that Tripp was "extremely volatile" and "heavily armed."

It now turns out that actually, according to the SCSO report, that a June 20 call was first received by a Tesla Las Vegas call center, and that information was forwarded to Gigafactory security in Storey County.

Then, Sean Gourthro, the head of Tesla Investigations, texted a Storey County law enforcement official, Chief Deputy Tony Dosen, to say that actually it was a woman who had called and added that Tripp was en route to "shoot up Tesla."

Gourthro also told the sheriff's department that Tesla was able to "verify the information in regards to Tripp being armed." (Tesla did not explain how it knew this.)

Later on the in the 10-page report, Shamara Bell, the Las Vegas call center staffer who received the initial call, told authorities that the now-male "caller stated that he had never heard Tripp directly make any threats regarding the Tesla Gigafactory."

However, according to the report, three separate deputies were dispatched to confront an "active shooter threat" at the Gigafactory on June 20, when in fact no such shooter existed.

"There’s so many things in here that raise eyebrows," Meissner added.

Lordy, there are tapes

Tesla and the SCSO spent several hours on June 20 trying to find Tripp, which they eventually did. The SCSO eventually concluded that Tripp was not armed and did not pose a threat.

In July, Tripp announced that he had hired Meissner, a New York attorney, to help him file a formal whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Tripp maintains that he has been trying to reveal what he claims are damaged batteries that made it to Tesla Model 3 cars now on the road.

For its part, Tesla has strongly denied that any such damaged batteries made it into any Model 3. The company has previously said in a statement that "Tripp is either not telling the truth or he simply has no idea what he is talking about."

Both Meissner and Ars have filed further public records requests in order to obtain the body-worn camera footage of the SCSO’s interview with Tripp, among other documents.

For some reason, however, Chief Deputy Dosen "did not retain" a copy of this original text message that Tesla sent him.

"My Brooklyn intuition tells me things don’t jibe—you don’t even save the text?" Meissner added.

"If I’m correct and this is all a fabrication, this is a serious crime," he continued, referring to a state law forbidding false terrorist threats.

"I don’t think this would have been done without authorizations by upper echelons of Tesla."

Tesla did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

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