Musk has a long history of attacking journalists who write stories critical about him or his company, and he famously called a guy who helped save a bunch of kids a pedophile for criticizing his ill-advised efforts to help out. When he was a kid, he was pushed down a flight of stairs for making fun of a fellow student's father's suicide, and Musk's father was not on his son's side.
Elon did everything in his power to ruin the life of a whistle-blower. After they were able to identify the source of the leak, Martin Tripp, someone who had a personal vendetta against Tripp called in a false police report that he was planning a mass shooting. I cannot say who that someone was, but both Tesla and Musk himself were spreading rhetoric that Tripp was a dangerous individual.
This is not new behavior.