Scotlands former first minister Humza Yousaf has accused Elon Musk of accessing his private messages as part of a campaign to besmirch his reputation.
The ex-SNP leader claimed that Musk, who is one of the richest men in the world, scours the communications of people he sees as a threat.
Yousaf said he has no doubt the billionaire owner of X is racist and said he is certain Musk has access to his private messages on the social media platform.
The two men have been involved in an ongoing feud since Mr Yousaf was first minister.
When asked if he thinks Mr Musk had access to his X messages, Mr Yousaf told the Tortoise Medias Elons Spies podcast: Im certain he absolutely does and Im certain he scours the private messages of those that he sees as a threat.
In fact, Im certain he has a whole team of people who are now looking at any information they can gather on me and try to use it to besmirch my reputation, and hell use any nefarious tactics in order to do that.
The podcast said it understood Mr Musk had denied accessing private messages on X.
Yousaf (pictured) has accused Elon Musk of accessing his private messages as part of a campaign to besmirch his reputation
The podcast said it understood Elon Musk (pictured) had denied accessing private messages on X
Elon Musk and Humza Yousaf have been at loggerheads for more than a year with a series of social media and TV spats
During unrest in parts of England and Northern Ireland this summer, Musk claimed civil war is inevitable in response to a post blaming the riots on mass migration and open borders.
Mr Yousaf referred to Mr Musk as a race baiter and claimed he was one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
Musk had also branded the Prime Minister two-tier Keir - a nickname used by critics on the right who say Muslim protesters are being treated more favourably by police than other groups.
The Tesla owner - who has been appointed by US President-elect Donald Trump to head a government department to cut regulation - replied by claiming Mr Yousaf is obviously super racist against white people.
Mr Musk said: I dare that scumbag to sue me. Go ahead, make my day.
He then added: Legal discovery will show that however big a racist hes been in public communications, he is vastly worse in private communications.
The former first minister said the businessmans comments were an attempt to threaten and intimidate him.
The former first minister, who is now a backbench MSP at Holyrood, said he will continue to speak out.
Let me be clear that Elon Musk could have trillions, let alone billions, and he wouldnt be able to shut me up, he said.
Were going to continue to call out his racist, far-right white supremacist tendencies.
But that caught me by surprise and I started to wonder what it was he was possibly talking about.
I thought well okay, this is somebody who obviously has access to Twitter DMs (direct messages) or X DMs, and that should ring alarm bells for people.
Your private conversations you have in your DMs, how secure are they?
Mr Yousaf claimed Mr Musk was making a pointed accusation and added that his followers had encouraged him to publicly release the messages.
He said: Im thinking, Ive been on Twitter for a long time, have I made an off-colour joke? Have I said something in a private communication?
So, I thought I better do the belt and braces thing, and as I say there was nothing there, and unsurprisingly so.
But here is somebody who is basically saying to me by the way you better watch out. Im going to release stuff on you and its going to make your life hell.
Mr Yousaf repeated his previous remarks that the billionaire is one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
He added: Hes unaccountable, one of the wealthiest, by some accounts, the wealthiest man, an individual on the planet.
He does what he wants, says what he wants and does not care about the consequences.
X has been approached for comment.
The first skirmish came last year when a speech Mr Yousaf gave in 2020 resurface and Musk called him racist
Yousaf responds to Musk with a post which read racists foaming at the mouth at my very existence with a Gif of Navid from Still Game dancing
Musk responds to Yousafs comments at the Edinburgh Fringe by saying he is a super racist who loathes white people
Yousaf appears on CNN where he accuses Musk of spreading disinformation on X
Musk responds saying Yousaf is super racist. I dare that scumbag to sue me
The pairs bad blood goes back more than a year over comments made by Humza in 2020 that resurfaced on X last year.
In a speech, Mr Yousaf talked about other peoples surprise that he is often the only non-white person in the room in most of the meetings he attends.
He added: Why are we so surprised when the most senior positions in Scotland are filled almost exclusively by people who are white?
Take my portfolio, for example. The Lord President is white, the Lord Justice Clerk is white, every High Court judge is white, the Lord Advocate is white, the Solicitor General is white, the chief constable is white, every deputy chief constable is white, every assistant chief constable is white, the head of the Law Society is white, the head of the Faculty of Advocates is white and every prison governor is white.
He made the speech during a debate to show solidarity with anti-racism campaigners following the death of George Floyd in the United States in 2020.
But Musk branded Mr Yousaf a blatant racist when video of the speech started re-circulating on social media last year. He was replying to an account named End Wokeness, which had shared the clip.
In April there was also an attack on the SNP and a policy backed by Yousaf.
Mr Musk signaled support for JK Rowling after she challenged Scotlands new hate crime law which could see citizens arrested for addressing a transgender person with the wrong pronouns.
The Harry Potter author and prominent gender critic, who often refuses to use a persons chosen pronouns in her frequent posts on X, formerly Twitter, challenged police to arrest her for her own apparent violations.
But Police Scotland confirmed that no action would be taken against Rowling, 58, despite thousands of complaints against her.
Mr Musk gave his support for the author with a fire emoji.