A New York Times investigation into the background of Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vice presidential candidate who grew up in Oakland, paints a lower than flattering portrait of the once little-known lawyer, vaccine skeptic and self-proclaimed “Silicon Valley Princess” who would like to be only a stone's throw away from the presidency.
Among other things, the New York Times repeats a Wall Street Journal report It alleges that Shanahan had a sexual encounter with Elon Musk, the longtime friend of her then-husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin. While Shanahan and Musk had previously denied an affair, The Times reported that Shanahan told Brin, in addition to friends, family and advisers, that she had sex with Musk at a non-public party in Miami in December 2021.
The party was hosted by Musk's brother Kimball Musk in reference to Art Basel. The Tesla CEO and Shanahan took ketamine, a preferred party drug that’s legal with a prescription, The Times reported, citing 4 individuals with knowledge of the incident and related documents. They then “disappeared together for several hours,” the Times said.
Two weeks after the party, Shanahan and Brin separated, and he filed for divorce after five years of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences,” The Times reported, citing court documents.
However, this wasn't the primary time Shanahan was allegedly cheating on a relationship: The Times reported that she began an affair with Brin back in 2014, just weeks before she was set to marry San Francisco tech investor Jeremy Kranz.
Shanahan and Brin met at a yoga festival in Lake Tahoe in July 2014, The Times reported. She married Kranz just a few weeks later, but he soon discovered her relationship with Brin after seeing text messages between her and Brin on her phone, The Times said.
Twenty-seven days after the marriage, Kranz filed for an annulment, citing fraud, The Times reported, citing court records. But he agreed to finish their marriage through divorce and drop the fraud lawsuit after Shanahan threatened to harm himself, The Times said.
Shanahan and Brin married in 2014 and he became her “entry point into the upper echelons of the tech industry,” The Times reported. The couple traveled the world, taking trips on Brin's yachts and having fun with stays at their various properties in Los Altos, Lake Tahoe, Montana and Malibu. Shanahan also began her profession as an entrepreneur and philanthropist with the goal of becoming a philanthropist like MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Living among the many global elite also included attending and hosting fabulous parties — and using recreational drugs like ketamine, cocaine and psychoactive mushrooms, the Times reported, citing documents and accounts from eight people.
After Shanahan's marriage to Brin hit a slump throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, she began going out without him more often in 2021. At a celebration in Miami, Shanahan was “so intoxicated with drugs and alcohol that she needed an intravenous drip,” the Times reported.
Shanahan also threw herself a Studio 54-style celebration at a New York club. One of her guests was Musk.
When the Wall Street Journal reported on Shanahan's alleged sexual encounter with Musk on the Miami party, she and Musk denied an affair. Shanahan also doubled down on the denial in an interview she gave to People magazine iin 2023.
Shanahan described Musk as a friend and said she sought his advice on the way to deal along with her young daughters' autism diagnosis. While hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 2021, Musk revealed that he has Asperger's syndrome and spoke afterward about how the diagnosis has affected his life.
In an interview with People, Shanahan expressed her dismay at accusations that she is a “money grabber” and called them sexist, despite the fact that she has amassed a billion-dollar fortune through her divorce settlement with Brin.
“My career was based on academic and intellectual credibility, and I was internationally denounced for being a fraud,” Shanahan told People. “Being known for a sexual act is one of the most humiliating things… it was absolutely debilitating.”
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