Musk has already denied he had a fling with Shanahan, slamming WSJ for the story.

San Francisco: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has suggested that Nicole Shanahan, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, should sue The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) for falsely reporting that she had a brief affair with him last December while separated from Brin.

Musk has already denied he had a fling with Shanahan, slamming WSJ for the story.

“As a ‘public person’, standard to win a defamation lawsuit against a news org is almost impossible,” Musk said in one of his tweets.

“Nicole is not a public person, so (she) could win. I hope she sues them,” added Musk, the world’s richest person with an estimated net worth of $219 billion.

Shanahan’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, told NBC News that “make no mistake, any suggestion that Nicole had an affair with Elon Musk is not only an outright lie but also defamatory”.

According to a New York Post report, Musk then attacked the WSJ’s investigations editor, Michael Siconolfi, for doing “so many fake hit pieces”.

The newspaper hit back at Musk.