There are few things more dangerous than someone who is really powerful and equally petty. Rich person vengeance is ten times worse than regular human vengeance, because they have the will and the means to rain hell down on anyone who ever even remotely slights them. Such as how ...
Last year, Tesla assembly line worker Martin Tripp leaked documents to Business Insider about shenanigans going down at the factory. The scandal had to do with the place scrapping raw material, which wastes money and potentially deceives investors, but it was like Elon Musk's fourth-biggest scandal of 2018, so you likely didn't hear or care about it. But Tesla cared about this one, and once they identified the leaker and debriefed Musk, they fired Martin. And then sued him for $167 million.
The next day, a call to Tesla security said Martin was volatile. Security contacted the sheriff's office, saying that Martin was planning on shooting up the factory, and Musk personally emailed The Guardian with this same accusation, though that wasn't precisely what the call had said. The sheriff confronted Martin and determined the threat to be unfounded, as he lacked certain factors associated with shooters, such as having a gun.
The sheriff reported his findings to Tesla. But then, according to what the sheriff told Bloomberg, Tesla asked him to publicize the shooting threat anyway. And when he refused, Tesla continued to contact reporters saying Martin planned to shoot the place up. Elon Musk also tweeted that Martin admitted to accepting bribes from the Business Insider reporter. Bloomberg reviewed transcripts of Martin's six-hour Tesla interrogation about the leak and concluded that wasn't true, either. This was the same month, incidentally, that Musk accused a rescue diver in Thailand of being a pedophile.
Martin has since filed an official SEC whistleblower complaint. And the factory's security manager has also filed an official SEC whistleblower complaint, supporting Martin and saying the security team acted unethically. The manager shares other juicy details that aren't strictly relevant, including heavy drug use at the factory, theft, and workers having sex on the premises. So I imagine that the Tesla leaks are far from over.
Throughout Rudolph Giuliani's two terms as mayor of New York, he hosted a weekly radio show called Live From City Hall ... With Rudy Giuliani. You can go listen to old recordings if you wanna feel kinda sad about how this dude has deteriorated in the last two decades. The final show aired on September 7, 2001, and the show's website remains broken and laughably ancient to this day.
In 1997, a chauffeur named James Schillaci called in to the show. Police were messing with traffic lights in the Bronx, he said. They were repeatedly driving their cars over sensors so they could trigger red lights and then ticket motorists, and James had video to prove it. Giuliani laughed off James' complaints because he had bigger problems to deal with, like the team of tiny goblins piloting his flesh suit. So James went to The New York Daily News, and the following day, officers came to his home and put him in handcuffs.
They were arresting him for a traffic offense of his own, a violation from 13 years earlier. That's not something the city is supposed to do, so a judge threw the charge out, but the arrest served its purpose of punishing and discrediting James. "Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower," said Giuliani in a press conference. "Maybe he's dishonest enough to lie about police officers." Then the NYPD released the man's criminal record to the press, which they didn't have the right to do either. And they leaked that he had been convicted of sodomy. Wow, that would be a hell of a plot twist ... if it was true in the slightest.
James had never actually been convicted of that, and they made the announcement just because they wanted to smear him. James ended up having an emotional breakdown and had to be hospitalized. He eventually sued the city over its conduct, and was awarded $290,000. As for Giuliani, he repented and never did anything dishonest again. Right?
Lyndon B. Johnson became president after JFK was assassinated, was elected again in 1964, and was eligible to run again in 1968, under the 22nd Amendment's rarely used "Oh my god, they killed Kennedy" clause. But he chose not to seek reelection. The commonly accepted reasoning for this is that he had lost popularity and also had health issues, so he was willing to step aside and let the nomination go to his vice president, even though the man was named "Hubert Humphrey." That doesn't scream "president" as much as it does "'60s Marvel character who runs a hamburger stand."
What most people don't know is that after Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, LBJ tried to get the DNC to draft him as their nominee after all, though he hadn't even been campaigning. This attempt totally failed; even the "Oh my god, they killed another Kennedy" clause was no help. And so Johnson came to resent Humphrey. Or rather, came to resent him more. LBJ had disliked Humphrey for years. And he further soured on the man when he departed from Johnson's plan for the Vietnam War, despite having pinky-promised not to and despite reciting a prepared speech on Vietnam while LBJ used the toilet.
The Republican going up against Humphrey was Richard Nixon, and the Democrats suspected him of a lot of shady stuff. They suspected he'd sabotaged Vietnam peace talks, which constituted light treason. And they suspected Greece's military dictators were funding his campaign, which made him an illegitimate candidate and a foreign asset. Sadly, Humphrey couldn't dramatically point his finger at Nixon because he had no proof backing his suspicions.
But Johnson did. A Greek journalist gave him evidence of the foreign funding, and his own illegal surveillance proved the sabotage. Revealing the surveillance would have hurt Johnson's legacy, but there was no reason to sit on the Greek evidence and to lie to Humphrey about having it, other than being perfectly happy with Nixon winning the election. Incidentally, we only know any of this because of documents that surfaced almost 40 years later. So if you think you have a "pretty good" idea about what's happening with politicians today, yeah, good luck with that.
Related: 6 Amazing Stories Of Celebrities Getting Petty Revenge
Bill H. Gross is a billionaire, and if you haven't heard of him before, well, that's likely for the best. See, Bill ran the world's largest bond fund, and he made his first money out of college by counting cards playing blackjack. He has an entire Smithsonian exhibit devoted to his love of philately, which sounds like a sex act that I'm too poor to properly understand, much less enjoy.
In 2016, Bill's wife Sue filed for divorce. The proceedings were less than amicable, but at one point, to decide who would gain custody over a Picasso painting, the couple flipped a coin. Sue won. Then she revealed that she had already stolen the painting, having replaced it with a fake of her own creation years ago. This seemed to change the rules of the game, and Bill tried to get the painting back, but he failed. It went on to sell for $35 million at auction.
Bill, now being kicked out of his mansion by Sue (a mansion that was coincidentally worth almost exactly the same as the stolen painting), allegedly decided to leave the place uninhabitable. According to the former Mrs. Gross, he used the power of smell. He allegedly put dead fish in the vents, and spread the smell of both vomit and flatulence using ready-made "fart sprays," bottles of which Sue found in the trash and produced for the court. Presumably, billionaires use a much fancier brand of fart spray than us regular Joes.
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