Since they didn't disclose this, wouldn't it then be fraud? Does anyone remember when Nikola rolled their truck down a hill to make it appear to be driving? The CEO went to prison...
In any case, from the article,
"Another robot — or the human voicing it — told an attendee in a stilted impression of a synthetic voice, “Today, I am assisted by a human,” adding that it’s not fully autonomous."
So it seems in fact they were fairly transparent about what was going on. The article just has a deceptive headline.
If Trump wins, all of the investigations will simply go away.
If Trump loses, then there are already a number of SEC/DOJ investigations targeting Musk over FSD claims and how X was purchased that would see him face jail time.
It makes it look like a classic dogecoin pump-and-dump scheme which backfired when it became clear how completely illegal it was. I haven't followed it in detail though so am curious about other interpretations