Shortly following reports of an apparent second assassination attempt against former US president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Elon Musk decided to speak up.

“And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala ,” Musk, X’s owner, wrote in a now deleted post, in response to another person asking, “Why they want to kill Donald Trump?”

After deleting the post—which could be interpreted as a call to murder President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the US presidential election—Musk indicated that it was merely a joke that fell flat given the context. “Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” he wrote, adding, “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

The incident was the latest in a long line of increasingly incendiary political posts from Musk, whose substantial defense contracts with the US government may give him access to highly sensitive information even while he makes potential threats against the sitting commander in chief. And they point to the more pressing risk that Musk’s recent rhetoric has posed: the potential to inspire further political violence.

While Sunday night’s post is gone, it appears likely that Musk could receive some attention from federal law enforcement, if he hasn’t already.

The United States Secret Service declined WIRED’s request to comment on Musk’s post. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees,” USSS spokesperson Nate Herring tells WIRED.

“In my experience, the Secret Service would take such a comment very seriously,” says Michael German, a former FBI special agent and a liberty and national security fellow at NYU School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Typically, agents would go out and interview the subject to ensure that there wasn’t an existing threat, and to make the subject aware that the agency takes such statements seriously.”

German notes that it’s possible the FBI could also launch an investigation. However, it’s unlikely that Musk would face any charges for his post. “On its face, the tweet would not meet the ‘true threat’ test, in that it wasn’t a direct threat to do harm to the vice president, so it wouldn’t likely proceed to prosecution,” German says. Still, “it would create a record of the investigations.”

The FBI declined WIRED’s request to comment on Musk’s post. X did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Both Biden and Harris have released statements condemning the apparent attempt on Trump’s life and political violence more broadly. In a statement to ABC News, the White House condemned Musk’s post. “Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about,” the statement says. “This rhetoric is irresponsible.”

Where things get dicier for Musk is his role as a major contractor for the US Department of Defense and NASA. According to Reuters, SpaceX signed a $1.8 billion contract in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees US spy satellites. The US Space Force also signed a $70 million contract late last year with SpaceX to build out military-grade low-earth-orbit satellite capabilities. Starlink, SpaceX’s commercial satellite internet wing, is providing connectivity to the US Navy.

Elon Musk’s security team, known as Voyager, has 20 security personnel who follow him everywhere, even to the bathroom.

According to a report by the New York Times Tesla boss does not move around without his bodyguards.

However, Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO and Musk’s predecessor, often travelled without bodyguards in San Francisco.

In January 2016, the total cost of Musk’s security was more than $163,000, which has increased substantially over the years. The report cited the Tesla filing saying that the company paid $2.4 million in 2023 and another $500,000 through February 2024 for Musk’s security.

During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Musk spoke about the threats against him. He claimed that two ‘homicidal maniacs’ had threatened to kill him. The report said that Elon Musk had bought a house secretly in 2022 after his previous address became public.

In the same year, Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. In December 2022, he tried to suspend the X account of a university student who tracked his private jet and more than 24 other accounts. He stated that these were “basically assassination coordinates,” the report said.

Apart from Musk, security has also tightened for Tesla’s former chief financial officer, Zachary Kirkhorn, who had received a death threat demanding $300,000 via email as bitcoin, according to reports. Such instances were reportedly made between 2022 and 2023 from Tesla’s HQ. The law enforcement agencies categorised these as “terroristic threats”.

Elon Musk and his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have spent millions of dollars to ensure his safety. According to the New York Times report, citing internal Tesla documents, they have paid security company Gavin de Becker & Associates and others. The report said, quoting the documents and security experts, that Elon Musk also started Foundation Security to protect himself from threats.

After setting an altitude record and staging the first non-government spacewalk, billionaire Jared Isaacman and his three crewmates returned to Earth early Sunday, plunging back into the atmosphere aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft for an on-target splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

With Isaacman and pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet monitoring cockpit displays, flanked by SpaceX medical officer Anna Menon and crew trainer Sarah Gillis, the spacecraft slammed back into the discernible atmosphere and decelerated in a fireball of atmospheric friction, protected by a SpaceX-designed heat shield.

A few minutes later, the spacecraft’s parachutes unfurled and the Crew Dragon settled to a gentle 15-mph splashdown at 3:36 a.m. EDT near Dry Tortugas, about 70 miles from Key West, Florida.

Spectacular, if ghostly, infrared images of the spacecraft during re-entry were captured by a NASA photo-reconnaissance jet and then by an IR camera on a SpaceX recovery ship. Even the crew of the International Space Station got a chance to witness the spacecraft’s fiery re-entry.

“We actually had a pretty neat view of Polaris Dawn entering,” astronaut Mike Barratt radioed flight controllers in Houston. “All of us were more or less crowded in the (multi-window) cupola watching it. That was pretty spectacular for us.”

The SpaceX recovery ship was on the scene within about a half hour to haul the capsule on deck, where support personnel were standing by to help the crew members out of the spacecraft. All four climbed out under their own power after five days in weightlessness, clearly elated and smiling broadly as they greeted the recovery crew.

After routine post-landing medical checks, Isaacman and his crewmates were expected to be flown ashore by helicopter followed by a flight back to the Kennedy Space Center for reunions with family and friends.

The Polaris Dawn mission, financed by Isaacman, in cooperation with SpaceX, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket early Tuesday. Right off the bat, the crew set a new altitude record for a piloted spacecraft in Earth orbit, reaching a high point, or apogee, of 875 miles.

That’s farther from Earth than anyone has flown since the final Apollo voyage to the moon in 1972.

Early Thursday, the crew set another record when Isaacman and Gillis took turns floating just outside the capsule’s hatch in the first non-government spacewalk ever conducted.

“Back at home we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, Earth sure looks like a perfect world,” Isaacman marveled, taking in a spectacular view of the borderless planet below as he floated through the Crew Dragon’s hatch.

The goal of the brief excursions was to test the SpaceX-designed pressure suits in the harsh environment of space, assessing their mobility and checking the motion of wrist, elbow and shoulder joints to help engineers design improved versions for future flights to the moon and, eventually, Mars.

Along with a full slate of biomedical research, the crew also tested laser communications technology linking the Crew Dragon to the Starlink constellation of commercial internet relay satellites.

“Early this morning via @Starlink space lasers, the Polaris Dawn crew chatted with SpaceX teams over coffee and donuts,” SpaceX posted on X Saturday. “During the 40+ minute uninterrupted video call, Dragon completed half an orbit over the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., cutting southeast over the Atlantic Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope.”

Earlier in the mission, Gillis, an accomplished violist, participated in what amounted to an international concert, performing composer John Williams’ “Star Wars” song “Rey’s Theme,” accompanied by young musicians in the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Sweden and Uganda.

The Polaris Dawn mission is the first of three planned by Isaacman, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, in cooperation with Musk.

The second flight will be another Crew Dragon mission while the third will be the first piloted flight of SpaceX’s huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket, now under development in Texas.

It’s not known how much Isaacman is paying for the flights or how much SpaceX funded on its own.

Polaris Dawn is SpaceX’s fifth commercial Crew Dragon flight to orbit and its 14th including NASA missions carrying crew members to the International Space Station. The California rocket builder has now launched 54 men and women to orbit since piloted flights began in May 2020.