Shawdesh Desk:

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and an avid supporter of Donald Trump, was plunged into new controversy on Friday after a report that he is in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Wall Street Journal story, which has been denied by the Kremlin, comes days after the US Justice Department sent a letter to Musk’s America PAC warning that its $1 million giveaways to registered voters may violate federal law.

Musk has reportedly donated $118 million to his personal pro-Trump political action committee, an organization which collects funds for elections.

Musk already holds a top secret clearance because of SpaceX, which launches rockets for NASA and the Pentagon, and the Wall Street Journal said his contacts with Putin have raised ‘potential national security concerns’ among some members of the Biden administration although there is no evidence of any ‘possible security breaches.’

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said Friday the report ‘should be investigated.’

The Journal said the Musk-Putin conversations touched on ‘personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions,’ although at one point the Russian leader asked the US billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the report, saying ‘it’s all untrue, absolutely false information.’

Putin had one contact with Musk before 2022, Peskov said, when they spoke on the phone.

‘It was a fact-finding conversation,’ he said. ‘They talked about more visionary technology, about technology for the future.’

SpaceX’s Starlink has been a vital communications tool for Ukrainian forces battling Russian troops and Musk ‘categorically’ denied earlier this year that any terminals had been sold to Russia.