Mexico City, Mexico - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Tuesday that she's dropping a potential lawsuit against Elon Musk for a message on X in which he accused her of working for drug cartels.

On February 23, after the powerful drug lord Nemesio Oseguera "El Mencho" was killed in a military operation in Mexico, the president gave a speech addressing the raid, to which Musk responded by saying, "she's just saying what her cartel bosses tell her to say."

Following this remark, Sheinbaum said she and her legal team were considering suing Musk, who runs Tesla and the social media outlet X.

"I finally took the decision to not denounce him, to not open a civil lawsuit, which was what we thought about for this case. We'll see what comes now, and then we'll reevaluate," the president said at her morning press conference without explaining her decision not to sue.

Musk, who worked for President Donald Trump last year with the mission of firing tens of thousands of federal workers and is an on-and-off ally of him, has repeatedly accused Sheinbaum and her government of going soft against drug cartels, alleging she is in cahoots with them. Trump is always pressing Mexico to do more against the cartels.

In 2023, the business magnate announced the construction of a new Tesla factory in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, but abandoned the project in 2024 in the face of Trump's threats to impose tariffs on Mexico.