Attorney who denied having an affair with Elon Musk says the scandal was 'humiliating' and 'utterly debilitating'

• Attorney Nicole Shanahan spoke out nearly a year after a scandal involving Elon Musk.

• Sources had told WSJ that Shanahan had an affair with Elon Musk while married to Google's Sergey Brin.

• Shanahan and Musk denied the affair, and Shanahan said the scandal was "utterly debilitating."

Nicole Shanahan said it was "utterly debilitating" after The Wall Street Journal reported last year that unnamed sources alleged that she had an affair with Elon Musk.

Shanahan, an attorney and Google cofounder Sergey Brin's ex-wife, denied the affair. Brin's lawyer had declined to comment at the time. The Journal's report had cited multiple sources alleging an affair had caused a rift in Musk and Brin's longtime friendship and led Shanahan and the Google cofounder to file for divorce. Musk called the report "total bs" on Twitter last year and shared a picture of himself at a party with Brin. Shanahan's attorney called the story an "outright lie" in a statement last year.

Shanahan is now speaking out on the entire scandal in an interview with People that was published on Wednesday— her first in-depth interview since the Journal's report.

Shanahan again denied any romantic or sexual relationship with Musk, telling People she only had "collegial" conversations with the Tesla CEO about how to help her daughter, who has autism. The attorney said she'd asked Musk about autism treatment due to his background with Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company that aims to allow people to one day communicate using only their mind. In the past, Musk has said Neuralink's brain chips could one day "solve" autism and schizophrenia.

"It was a conversation that was very meaningful about life and how people show up for one another," Shanahan told People. "To be painted with such a massive scarlet letter for it just seems so unfair."

Shanahan told People that she has only recently officially divorced Brin, after a 17-month legal process. The two were separated at the time the report of the alleged affair came out last year, she said.

"To be known because of a sexual act is one of the most humiliating things . . . it was utterly debilitating," she told People. "I remember feeling like everything I had ever worked for was under siege by a press cycle that had no idea what was going on in my life and who I was," she added.

Shanahan, Musk, and representatives for Brin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication.

A spokesperson for the Journal said: "We are confident in our sourcing, and we stand by our reporting."

The attorney, who founded the Bia-Echo Foundation, said she has since learned to move on from the scandal, adding that she'd struggled to adapt the billionaire lifestyle all along.

"It's nearly impossible to have mega wealth and be deeply grounded," Shanahan told People, adding that there's a sense of "disconnectedness" and lack of community you experience as a billionaire.

In the interview, Shanahan addressed a range of topics, from her early career and first meeting Brin at Stanford University to her latest company, a VC firm called Planeta Ventures.

Read People's full interview with Shanahan on its website.

Read the original article on Business Insider