Taylor Swift is taking on the Florida student behind the notorious ElonJet account
Orlando, Florida - Taylor Swift has bad blood with a Florida college student who tracks the environmentally toxic private jet habits of celebrities and billionaires.
According to the Washington Post, the pop superstar's attorneys have sent several cease-and-desist letters to Jack Sweeney, a 21-year-old University of Central Florida junior, demanding that he stop posting the whereabouts of her private jet.
Sweeney famously uses open-source flight data gathered from hobbyists around the world, as well as public data from the Federal Aviation Administration, and posts on platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X.
His documentation of Swift's whereabouts have been especially popular as the singer’s carbon emissions continue to be criticized by environmental advocates.
Swift's attorney, Katie Wright Morrone of Washington law firm Venable, first sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sweeney in December, the Post reported, calling his flight-tracker accounts "stalking and harassing behavior" and threatening legal action.
The letter states that Sweeney caused the Swift family "direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress," and had worsened the performer's "constant state of fear for her personal safety."
Swift's legal team hint at connection to stalkers
Instagram and Facebook disabled Sweeney's accounts that month, so Sweeney started sharing Swift updates on his Celeb Jets accounts, where he posts updates on a variety of stars.
Morrone sent a second letter in January. In the same month, a man was arrested three times in five days near Swift's Manhattan apartment on charges of stalking.
"We cannot comment on any ongoing police investigation but can confirm the timing of stalkers suggests a connection," a spokesperson for Swift wrote in an email to the Tampa Bay Times. "His posts tell you exactly when and where she would be."
Sweeney started tracking Elon Musk's jet in 2020, as well as those belonging to Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian, and Drake, among others. He has been known to bargain with jet-owners who want their information deleted.
Musk removed Sweeney’s Twitter account, @elonjet, after he asked for $50,000. Sweeney deleted his Twitter account dedicated to the jet of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, but only after receiving basketball tickets from Cuban himself.
In response to being called "an awful human being" by Musk, Sweeney on Wednesday responded with a mocking post that suggested the billionaire was only concerned about his flights being tracked by ex-partner Grimes.
Cover photo: Collage: IMAGO / ZUMA Wire & REUTERS