Elon Musk gets into it with former Tesla employee he sued for alleged data hacking

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been quieter than usual on Twitter for the past day -- maybe because he's too busy emailing a former employee he called out for "sabotage" and proceeded to sue for stealing trade secrets and data about the electric car company.

The Washington Post obtained an email exchange between Musk and Martin Tripp, the former Nevada Gigafactory process technician worker, Tesla sued Wednesday. The emails were sent the same days the suit was filed in a district court in Nevada.

Bizarrely enough, Musk -- the eccentric billionaire CEO who is also heading space projects, hyperloop transit systems, and more -- went head on with the accused hacker, leaker, and framer.

In the suit, Tesla alleges Tripp hacked Tesla's data system, took photos and videos of the manufacturing process, shared data with the media, and put hacking software on three other employee computers in an attempt to receive data after he left Tesla.

In the series of messages dated Wednesday, Musk calls Tripp "a horrible human being" and calls him out for "framing other people." Musk tells him he betrayed the company and should be ashamed. Tripp didn't hold back, responding, "You have what's coming to you for the lies you have told to the public and investors."

We reached out to Tesla to hear what they have to say about the whole saga. Although Tesla didn't have any comment on the email exchange, Tesla said Tripp is falsely positioning himself as a whistleblower when he stole Tesla data and made false claims about the company's waste, production numbers, and use of damaged batteries in Model 3 cars.

This bizarre battle rages on.