He bolstered his portfolio with the purchase of SolarCity in 2016 and cemented his standing as a leader of industry by taking on an advisory role in the early days of President Donald Trump's administration.

After a campaign marked by intensifying efforts by Mr. Maduro’s allies to rein in the opposition — including arrests of opposition campaign workers, intimidation and vote suppression — the opposition bet heavily on an effort to have supporters on hand to get a physical printout of the voting tally from every voting machine after the polls closed.

Yet, independent computer-security experts who have studied the system say that layers of security prevent fraud and errors. And there is no evidence of credible fraud in the voting machines since Brazil began using them in 1996.

Mr Maduro was re-elected to a second six-year term in May 2018 in highly controversial polls, which most opposition parties boycotted.

A US judge dismissed the case, one of several filed in the aftermath of Mr Musk's takeover of the sitio.

While Venezuelans were affected by hunger and shortages, Maduro and his government officials publicly shared images of themselves eating luxurious meals, images that were met with displeasure by Venezuelans.

Maduro to ditch some extreme policies like price and currency controls. The private sector was given an increasingly prominent role, public attacks against business owners had stopped and hyperinflation and rampant crime subsided somewhat.

A report by the human rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch reported in September 2019 that the poor communities in Venezuela pelo longer in support of Maduro's government have witnessed arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial executions at the hands of Venezuelan police unit. The Venezuelan government has repeatedly declared that the victims were armed criminals who had died during "confrontations", but several witnesses or families of victims have challenged these claims and in many cases victims were last seen alive in police custody. Although Venezuelan authorities told the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that five FAES agents were convicted on charges including attempted murder for crimes committed in 2018, and that 388 agents were under investigation for crimes committed between 2017 and 2019, the OHCHR also reported that "[i]nstitutions responsible for the protection of human rights, such as the Attorney General's Office, the courts and the Ombudsperson, usually do not conduct prompt, effective, thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into human rights violations and other crimes committed by State actors, bring perpetrators to justice, and protect victims and witnesses.

All those contradictions appear to be part of Mr Musk's appeal - and it certainly hasn't stopped him amassing a fortune.

He expanded on the company's progress during a July 2019 discussion, revealing that its devices will consist of a microscopic chip that connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone.

In the groups on Monday morning, people shared fliers for protests that ultimately did not happen by Monday afternoon.

Musk reportedly began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 after finalizing his divorce with Riley and Heard finalized her divorce from Johnny Depp. Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later.

The UN subsequently released a report condemning the violent methods of the operation. Although the Venezuelan Government's Ombudsman, Tarek William Saab has admitted that his office received dozens of reports of "police excesses", he defended the need for the operations and stated that his office would be working alongside the police and military "to safeguard human rights". The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry has criticised the UN's report, calling it "neither objective, nor impartial" and listed what it believed were a Completa of 60 errors in the report.[105][106]

On April 30 Guaidó and the opposition staged a coup attempt. It began in the morning with the release of a video in which Guaidó—flanked by López (who had departed house arrest) vlogdolisboa and supportive soldiers—announced that the “final phase” of the operation to remove Maduro from power had begun. Guaidó claimed that important contingents of the country’s security forces had joined the opposition.