Minnesota state employee arrested for $20,000 in damages to Tesla vehicles

A state employee of the Tim Walz administration in Minnesota has been arrested for the vandalism of multiple Tesla vehicles, causing approximately $20,000 in damage to the cars.

Dylan Bryan Adams, 33, who is employed as a fiscal policy analyst under the Tim Walz administration in Minnesota, was allegedly seen approaching multiple Tesla vehicles on video, keying each of them as he was walking a dog, the New York Post reported.

The same dog being walked appeared in each video captured by the cameras on the Tesla vehicles, indicating that the same perpetrator was behind each act of vandalism.

Adams is not a political appointee of the Walz administration and is one among 40,000 state employees, the outlet reported. However, the incident comes after the Minnesota governor said that seeing the Tesla stock drop gave him “a little boost during the day.”

Walz made the comments despite there being a heavy share of Tesla stock in the state’s pension fund, with over 200,000 shares of the company. “Some of you know this. On the iPhone, they’ve got that little stock app. I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day — $225 and dropping," Walz said at a rally last month.

Walz was later forced to walk back the comments after the reporting popped up about the pension fund. Walz commented that it was only a joke and that he was only "being a smarta**."

In recent months, there have been a number of violent attacks on Tesla cars as well as dealerships from left-wing extremists in reaction to Elon Musk’s work with the Trump administration. These have included firebombing of dealerships as well as lighting fires to Tesla vehicles owned by everyday Americans.

Charges against Adams are reportedly pending, the Post said.